Blog Reply by Roger F Malina July 16 2024
Perhaps we should focus on the ability of humans to enable and make sense of
serendipity, rather than on the vague notions of creativity and imagination.
This blog expands on Piero Scaruffi’s proposition with a) the advocacy of learning CSS and b) training CSS or how to create conditions for desirable Coincidences, Synchronicities, and Serendipities.
Here is what Piero explains in response to my prior assertions:
I said: >
I am AI skeptic, having lived through the digital revolution when machines started taking decisions on their own i feel AI is just more of the same just cheaper and quicker.
Piero:
### Forget the “taking decision” part. Generative AI can “talk” and is a
mirror of our society. It’s us talking back to us. It can be trained to
be a generic pompous asshole (ChatGPT) or trained to be a scholar in a
specific field or trained to simulate one specific person (check out
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-ycB51yEzm-piero-scaruffi 🙂
Roger:
They, Disney, argues that AI can do all the creative work and that Disney humans use their imagination to make a profit. That AI doesn’t have imagination because it’s not in the database- creativity is usually recombination’s of what’s in the database of your mind or the electronics. Ingenuity is moving creativity from one place, in time or space, to another. Innovation is applied creativity.
Piero ###
Only problem is that it is so difficult to define “creative” and “imagination”. AI learns from humans. Humans learn from humans. Where’s the difference? Michelangelo learned from Domenico Ghirlandaio and many others. Instead, while re-reading the history of science, i realized how important Serendipity has been for what we call “progress”.
Often people didn’t invent X because they wanted to invent X: X happened and then
they (humans) realized what it meant.
Piero continues:
Perhaps we should focus on the ability of humans to make sense of
serendipity rather than on the vague notions of creativity and imagination.
Roger:
So I guess this narrative is an illustration of what I have called CSS. I wrote Piero an email expressing AI anxiety, and he came back with the word ‘serendipity’, which has been in my mind and emails for a long time, I have written about and discussed it with colleagues Robert Stern and Fred Turner in the UTDallas non-Center for Emergence Studies. We published one article, others on the way: https://athenaeumreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/EMERGENCE-AthenaeumReview9.pdf podcast at https://athenaeumreview.org/podcast/a-brief-history-of-emergence-with-frederick-turner-robert-stern-and-roger-f-malina/ .
I was first sensitized to ‘serendipity’ by David Peat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._David_Peat when I visited him at the Pari center, https://paricenter.com/ , a center that enables serendipities. His book is https://fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/books/stone.htm is called The Philosophers Stone and
“In The Philosopher’s Stone, Dr. Peat reveals an order to existence that is even deeper than we at first realized, a universal connectedness out of which mind and matter emerge. Most exciting of all, he suggests that the very atoms of our bodies are “conscious” of this order, giving us access to a limitless source of creativity and health. In language at once lucid and lyric, Dr. Peat explains the interrelated phenomena of serendipity and chaos science, the scientific correspondences of Eastern philosophies and Western physics, the linguistic properties of the genetic code, the connection between cell communication and the immune system, and much more.”
The narrative was augmented by cognitive scientist Zemir Seki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semir_Zeki . As an expert on visual cognition he realized that the brain is a pattern finding machines ( edges, symmetries( but also a pattern creating machine where there aren’t any. This in medical terms is Apophenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
He organized annual conferences at Univ of Calif Berkeley where each year one sense was discussed by people from ALL professions https://www.sfgate.com/health/article/BERKELEY-Conference-focuses-on-brain-pleasure-2506338.php
So what are the ways we can enhance the probabilities of Piero’s Serendipity but also useful/meaningful/desirable coincidences and synchronicities?
- Do something new – break the patterns of life: https://www.dosomethingnew.org/ . developed by Bonnie Pitman when she was very ill and in a daily rut due to living in bed most of the time.
2. Retrain your intuition and Curiosity
As a scientist, I know very well how we are supposed to be motivated by curiosity. We tend to be curious only about aspects of the world that funding is available to get. Or when the research can be done in a reasonable human time-scale ( if we expect it to take 100 years we won’t start). Or when an instrument already exists to study the scale of time and space that is relevant. What does the Universe care about the human senses and their explicit biases ?
The world expert on retraining your curiosity is now Cassini Nazir: https://cassininazir.com/ . A few of his tested methods are available at https://unknowing.design/ .
3. Listen loudly: Sometimes the noise is more desirable than the signal
As per the narrative above, the brain is a pattern finding and making machine. But the nature of patterns is that they appear ‘above the noise’. It is reasonable that we focus our limited attention on patterns. But sometimes the things that are worthwhile are in the noise.
Recently with Astrophysicists Lindsey King and Antareep Gogoi and a team of young composers led by almost Dr Andrew Blanton we sonified astrophysics data ( computer data and simulated data) and noticed that the audience paid more attention to the unusual noise rather than the familiar signals.
A purring cat is more happy making than a growling cat.
Running water more restful than dripping water.
The infrared more revealing than the ultraviolet.
Rough surfaces more interesting than smooth ones.
I personally don’t like the version :
Empathic listening: Empathic listening, often described as “listening loudly,” goes beyond hearing words. It involves understanding emotions, unspoken cues, and the underlying message behind what someone is saying. Stephen Covey famously coined this concept, highlighting its crucial role in building meaningful connections
Unfortunately, we only have ‘5 senses’: listening loudly applies to ALL senses even proprioception but we now know we have 9 senses++
Listen loudly in all your 9+senses so that we can enable serendipities more somethingly.
LVMH famously funded their ‘science for art’ prize: https://leonardo.info/isast/spec.projects/lvmh.html
where they needed to identify scientific discoveries that enabled improvements in the fashion, food, drinks et or ‘enhancing dreams’ (in their words). We failed in the area of several of the 9 senses needed to enhance the likelihood of desirable serendipities in the business world. In particular the sense of touch, we failed to help them make cheaper silk.
Serendipity is to be enhanced and AI to be kept under the covers.
Thanks Piero. PS I hate ‘success criteria’ methods that I learned at NASA. I prefer desirable outcomes- as humans we have overlapping but different desires (need for water, but not all want to be tourists just aventuriers and baroudeurs).