For some reason I’m fascinated when hard science meets squishy philosophy. Last week we discussed altruism in evolutionary terms. This week: what can fMRI scans and cranial electrodes tell us about empathy?

Definitions of empathy typically include sensitivity about what happens to others (“affective response”). In one experiment, mice were given painful electric shocks when put in a cage, generating a “fear response” (wigging out whenever they’re put in the cage). Mice placed in an adjacent cage also developed fear responses, just from watching. And the response was stronger among sibling mice, even stronger with mating partners. This suggests an empathetic, and not simply reflexive, response. (Empathy of the researchers electrifying innocent mice apparently was not measured.)

Another component of empathy is the capacity to understand another’s perspective. In 1991, neuroscientists accidentally discovered neurons that fired both when macaques picked up peanuts, and when they watched scientists pick up peanuts.  Since doing and watching are different, you’d expect different neurons to fire. But for these “mirror” neurons, they were indistinguishable. V. S. Ramachandran explains that you only know the difference because  your senses provide feedback when you act. Conversely, if you see someone’s arm touched when your arm is anaesthetized, you think you’ve been touched. So we empathize partly because we’re wired to think your actions are mine, unless our senses tell us otherwise.

Mirror neurons became all the rage, despite skeptics.  (On a depressing note, this study, and this, found mirror neurons fire less frequently when watching people of different races performing tasks.)

But empathy isn’t just an instinctive reaction. There are also “top-down” aspects regulating empathy. For example, in one study where people were showed images of hands being injured, empathy declined when people were distracted by the task of counting the images. Another measured less empathy in men witnessing pain in cheaters (but not women).

Some find neurological descriptions of behavior like empathy to be disconcerting. Does a biological explanation replace ethics and morality? I think not. The more we know about how we’re wired, the better we can override our biases with our big-brained judgment.

Learning about our kinder side by scaring the crap out of mice

Note: two good summaries of the neuroscience of empathy:

• The Social Neuroscience of Empathy
• Empathy: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Approach

I’ll bet you a beer you don’t know the species with DNA most closely matching humans.

The answer is the bonobo at 99.6%. (I’ll take a Bass Ale, thanks.) They look like chimpanzees, but behave quite differently. You could call chimpanzees the evil-parallel-universe versions of bonobos (minus the goatees). Chimps can be warm and loving, but they also maim, rape and kill each other. According to Vanessa Woods, however, bonobos cooperate rather than compete, literally preferring to make love rather than war.

Woods’ book Bonobo Handshake chronicles her study of bonobos in the Congo. She also describes the political backdrop of humans who do a lot of maiming, raping and killing of their own. (It’s like Jane Goodall meets Hotel Rwanda.) And don’t think that can’t happen here. The college students in the Stanford Prison Experiment, normally docile in their native environment, went Lord of The Flies in only six days.

Darwin himself wondered how good ever evolved. When others steal and kill, altruistic behavior is a sucker’s ticket to extinction. Darwin speculated some group-level selective advantage; others later developed models of nepotistic “kin selection.” But you still had the problem of free riders sleeping on the genetic couch of the altruists and outbreeding them. Enter George Price, who developed a mathematical model demonstrating how altruistic traits could be passed on genetically. Unfortunately, this convinced him selfless altruism didn’t exist.  He later gave away all his money, and ultimately committed suicide.

Today, people distinguish between “biological” altruism (evolutionary self-interest) and “psychological” altruism (intentional and empathetic). Getting back to bonobos, Woods saw one put herself between a fallen comrade and a gun, leading her to believe bonobos are capable of psychological altruism. She helped conduct experiments suggesting that bonobos trust and unselfishly share to a degree that chimpanzees would metaphorically fling feces at in contempt.

I was disappointed when Woods suggested an environment of plentiful food, rather than harsh competition, may have shaped the bonobos’ character.  Still, if the cruelty that comes so easily to us is absent in our closest relatives, further study seems like a good idea.

Recently I read The Geography of Time by Robert Levine, an intriguing overview of how individuals and cultures perceive the tempo or duration of time differently.

One section describes the irony that the richer our society becomes materially, the poorer we become regarding spare time. Levine cites a Harris poll finding “a 37 percent decrease in Americans’ leisure time over the past twenty years.” Wow. Funny though, the poll I found in the Harris archives said leisure time estimates decreased from 26.2 to 19.0 hours per week between 1973 and 1993. First, isn’t that a 27% decrease? Second, part of the report’s title read, “LEISURE TIME SHOWS NO CHANGE.” The actual numbers showed a decline, followed by a 14% increase between 1987 and 1993.

Others have reported conflicting results. Nobel laureate Robert Fogel calculated leisure time almost tripled between 1880 and 1995. Another paper reported a “dramatic increase in leisure time” between 1965 and 2003. But this paper reported essentially no change since 1900. (To form your own opinion, go to the methodology. How is leisure defined? How are demographics accommodated?)

But you can’t just look at the quantity of leisure time. Spare time isn’t a commodity in itself, it’s merely the currency we use to consume experiences. Levine quotes Allen Johnson as arguing that as productivity increases, so does the opportunity cost of sitting idle. The problem is that the increased variety and richness of leisure options means we can now waste our spare time as well.  Quoting Johnson, this “increase in the value of time…is felt subjectively as an increase in tempo or pace.”  Increased tempo increases stress, which is antithetical to leisure.  So our problem isn’t lack of leisure time, it’s our addiction to consuming experiences.

And with the annoying products I designed, you can tell yourself you’re spending more time with your family, while multi-tasking reading email on your phone.  Do two things  for the temporal price of one.

In other words, when it comes to leisure time, it’s less about quantity than quality.  I guess that’s why they call it “quality time.”  Speaking of which, my wife is downstairs watching TV, so I think I’ll join her.

OK, I’ve been getting a little heavy lately so I thought I’d dial it back and update you on things that caught my eye this week.

Robots, robots, robots
It’s surprising how much coverage you find on robots if you look,  even on non-geek sites. The NY Times, for example, seems to run a piece every month or so. This week’s article covered robots in the classroom. At one school, “Children swarmed the robot…. But by the end of the day, a couple of boys had yanked off its arms.” I can envision engineers pulling their hair out. “FFS!” (Singularity note: perhaps young boys stand the best chance fighting our future robotic overlords.)

Speaking of Singularity, a major robotics milestone was reported by the Singularity Hub. Willow Garage succeeded in programming a robot to get you a beer from the fridge. You can choose the brand you want, and it won’t release it from its iron grip until its camera sees a face.  Watch the video where employees click the “Beer Me” button and chill with the ‘bots.

Freakonomics meets MySpace
ScienceBlogs had a link to a dating site’s blog that applies statistical analysis to examine dating behavior.  This post contains a distribution chart of messages to men by age and income (spoiler alert: income matters).  This post described how men rate women’s looks much more charitably than women rate men’s looks–and then proceed to mainly message the best looking women. (And yet the data shows “cleavage” profile shots don’t do as well as travel photos for women.) It’s an oddly compelling combination of science and reality TV.  But there are more sobering posts like the correlations between race and messaging.

Best psychology experiment video ever
If you haven’t heard about an experiment where you count people passing a basketball, read no further and try this 30-second experiment.

Wasn’t that awesome?  Apparently 50% fail this test. Now that you think you’re so clever, check this one out. That’s the sequel: apparently expecting the unexpected doesn’t help unless you know what the unexpected is.

Follow the bouncing ball.

I used to assume there was an objective reality.

But that would require shared perceptions and memories, which turn out to be disturbingly unreliable and malleable. Sure, hindsight bias tells me I always knew you may not see reality perfectly. But my confirmation bias notices research showing unconscious biases in all of us, like “priming” (e.g., people played games more competitively when a briefcase is nearby).  Or the study showing people rate job candidates higher when resumes are attached to heavier clipboards.  The list goes on and on (104 are described in the Wikipedia article, “List of cognitive biases.”) See www.youarenotsosmart.com for amusing evidence of how clueless we are.

Psychologist David Dunning says, “What we see and what we hear is shaped by our preferences, our wishes, our fears, our desires…. We literally see the world the way we want to see it.”   There isn’t a binary break between realistic and delusional, just a sliding scale of cluelessness, self-deception and denial. Psychologists have known this since early cognitive dissonance experiments in 1959.

And Director Akira Kurosawa knew this in 1950, when he made Rashomon, the story of a murder told from the perspective of four eyewitnesses. Not surprisingly, the versions differ dramatically. You ultimately realize there is no “real” story, just individual interpretations. (And as we saw earlier, contaminated memories are indistinguishable from the originals.)

So facts and shared experiences don’t constitute objective reality. They are merely common building blocks from which we selectively create our individual realities.  And we each select different building blocks by choosing what we read, watch and hear. (Then join those with similar realities, like Glenn Beck or Jon Stewart fans.)

Are there evolutionary reasons behind this? Maybe we developed rationalization to avoid being traumatized by empathy (and got too good at it). Maybe self-deception is critical for innovation.  (The first cavemen who thought they could kill mammoths with pointed sticks were probably tragically mistaken.  But where would Silicon Valley without the audacity of spectacular failure?)

So that’s my reality now.  Perhaps less comforting, but it provides an interesting perspective on people–and me.

"Dude, we can totally take this guy."

When forming memories, you actually build physical connections (synapses) between neurons. People used to think this process was like burning CDs–once formed, memories wouldn’t change. Sure, they might get fuzzy, but that’s just reality viewed through something like cognitive beer goggles.

But it turns out that when we recall memories, we rebuild these connections from scratch. And you can interrupt this “reconsolidation” with drugs, literally erasing  memories. Clinical trials are being conducted to use this process to treat PTSD.  Great news–so why is my Spider Sense tingling?

Well, for one thing, new information can contaminate the original memory when it is rebuilt.  Slate recently documented the research of Elizabeth Loftus in this area.  In 1974, she showed people video of a car accident.  When asked how fast the cars were going when they “smashed into” each other, the estimates were higher than when the verb “contacted” was used (and more people mistakenly remembered broken glass). Loftus subsequently developed techniques to implant increasingly rich false memories, like being lost in a mall as a child, witnessing demonic possession, or being choked. She also showed how similar effects can increase false identifications in lineups. (Here’s a simple demonstration.)

Slate portrays Loftus as passionately pursuing the Dark Side to use for Good. (“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”) Occasionally she took side paths, like helping advertisers plant happy memories of their products.  But she fought wrongful eyewitness-based convictions, and controversially opposed repressed memory evidence.  Later, she planted false memories of getting sick eating unhealthy foods, actually modifying behavior to reduce consumption.  Then she expanded the “manipulation sessions” to reduce alcohol intake. She advocates attempting to purge traumatic memories, or even eliminate prejudices. (One catch, though: you must be unaware of the “manipulation” for it to work.)

Loftus proved memory was malleable by learning to, um, malleate it. It’s disturbingly easy, and you’re convinced the altered memories are true.  In her words, “You call up a file, edit it and then put the revised file back. The original is lost.”

Why do I suddenly have the urge to want to write everything down?

I have mixed reactions regarding the Singularity, the “technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence.” Once this happens, the argument goes, AI will program itself and spiral beyond human comprehension. If so, will they consider humans adorable pets or vermin destroying the planet?  It’s hard to feel a sense urgency when state-of-the-art recognition AI involves telling people from trees. But when it comes to uncontrollable, incomprehensible intelligence, you either have to reject the premise or welcome some contingency planning.

Ray Kurzwell takes a broader, sunnier view, emphasizing exponential advancement in numerous technologies. “With 30 linear steps, you get to 30,” he says. “With 30 steps exponentially, you get to one billion.” Progress is misleading though, because at 15 steps you’re only 0.003% there. Kurzwell estimates we’ll advance the equivalent of 200 centuries this century. He predicts we’ll download our brains, and live forever.

Incredible gains generate concomitant risks, however. If you hate the Gulf spill, imagine the equivalent catastrophic failure with self-replicating nanobots. Some feared turning on the Hadron Collider would generate a black hole (more like “apocalyptic failure”). And as  Adam Smith observed, people over-invest seeking upside and under-invest in risk mitigation (e.g., we buy too many lottery tickets and too little insurance).

Then there’s the exponential increase in destructive capabilities. About when my grandmother was born, the NY Times opined we were millions of years from manned flight. When her daughter was a teenager, B29s dropped 3600 tons of incendiary bombs on her home city in one night. And when her grandchildren were teenagers, ICBMs were capable of destroying the world many times over without even being piloted.

Too bad human benevolence doesn’t increase exponentially (or even linearly). Yet it stubbornly refuses to be defeated entirely. Ironically, my grandmother’s daughter named her son after Robert Little, a colonel in the Air Force that had devastated her hometown. After the war, he had shown tremendous generosity to her family, refusing to judge a people by the atrocities their Empire committed. Hopefully this capacity for kindness and understanding, despite our horrible flaws, will score us some points with our future robotic overlords.

Bonus links:

• If you’re interested in the exponential advancement of technology, Michio Kaku wrote a great book called Physics of The Impossible. He talks about crazy ideas that are theoretically possible, and how far we’ve gotten (like time travel and teleporation–did you know scientists have teleported particles?)
• For Hadron Collider fans, some people at CERN made the coolest uber-geek rap video ever made (topics include anti-matter and the Higgs bosons).

I’m posting this week’s blog a little early, to provide some color commentary for a new release of Vitamin D Video.

Version 1.3 is another free upgrade, with some significant improvements.

• Performance enhancements.  Processing video is now up to 2x faster!  Since we process video in real time, this really means you can run more cameras at once on your PC, or free up more processing power for other applications.  The biggest areas of improvement are at QVGA (320 x 240) resolution, and in scenes where there is very little activity (since we’d previously put effort into optimizing busy scenes). Your mileage will vary to a large degree, depending on factors described here.  A fast quad-core PC should now run up to 16 cameras at QVGA.
• Multi-camera arming (with delay). (Basic and Pro Editions).  If you have multiple cameras, you can configure a set to turn on with one click from a toolbar icon (in case you’ve been wondering why we have a toolbar for just two icons!).  There is an option to set a delay so you can leave the premises before notifications or alarms start. You can turn off all cameras with one click as well.
• Remote storage of clips to an FTP site. (Basic and Pro Editions). You can set up a rule to upload clips to a secure remote server.  There are websites that make it easy to set up an account to do this, many offering 1GB of storage free.
• Custom responses to rules. (Basic and Pro Editions). This was actually in v 1.2, but in case you missed it, you can set up a rule to trigger a custom program or script.  For example, you can configure a home automation system to turn on a light when an event is seen.

And my favorite interface enhancement is that if you have multiple cameras, you can stretch the monitor view to arrange the video panes in multiple columns.

For a video overview of these and other features, click here.

Happy monitoring!

You can change from one column of video panes to multiple columns by widening the window.

Last week the NY Times ran seven pieces covering your brain on gadgets, the Internet and multitasking. Several showed families engrossed with gadgets while ignoring each other.

Is this technology making us unable to focus (except, ironically, on our iPhones)?  It reminds me of the Monty Python sketch where an executive concludes grimly that souls don’t materialize because people are “distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.” After a dramatic pause, another asks, “What was that about hats again?”

Apparently, we evolved to react to stimuli–last guy to notice the panther didn’t breed.  Novel stimuli actually provide a  dopamine hit, explaining the addictive aspects of being plugged in. So wireless gadgets are like crack pipes for cyber-stimuli.  iPads sell because they provide a purer high.

We crave stimuli, but also justify gadget addiction.  Multitasking makes us more productive, right? Well, people can’t literally concentrate on two things simultaneously, like driving and texting.  We’re really “task switching” when we IM and email “simultaneously.”

Unfortunately, studies have shown task switching inhibits rather than increases productivity. The research often consists of switching between small tasks like adding vs. multiplying numbers.  You incur “switching costs” when you re-orient, so it’s more efficient to finish one task first.

But isn’t reality more complex?  Checking mail while waiting in line doesn’t get you your latte any slower. Or if you get bored or fatigued,  switching could theoretically increase  efficiency. (And what about time-sensitive tasks?) That said, you’re probably less efficient in “squirrel chasing mode” than you think.

Others, however, cite studies showing beneficial effects of being plugged in, even of multitasking. So which side is “right?”

Well first, don’t trust people who say studies support sweeping conclusions like “web surfing helps memory.”  If you actually read the studies and their methodologies, you often find narrower results than you expected.

Technology amplifies human tendencies, and isn’t inherently good or bad.  But whatever the negatives, people dislike giving up benefits, so you might as well go with the flow. Food creates problems too, but you can advocate good cooking and fighting obesity at the same time.

A friend recently forwarded me an interview with Robert Cailliau, co-developer of the world wide web.  At one point Calliau says the inefficiency of the iPhone drives him crazy, asking why he must take eight steps to enter an appointment instead of two on his Treo.

“I like things to be beautiful,” he says. “But first and foremost they have to be productive…. This is totally ridiculous.… Why are we going backwards?”

Apple’s design philosophy emphasizes beauty and simplicity, sacrificing some efficiency. It’s wonderful to have a one-button phone, but that means it has to take more steps to do other things.

The genius behind Apple’s designs lies in a ruthless enforcement of simplicity. If you achieve purity of design, people tolerate significant limitations (like no copy and paste on the first iPhone). But if you bet on purity, you have to be all in. Once you spoil the purity, people stop forgiving the limitations.

In contrast, the original Palm OS philosophy emphasized the simplicity of efficiency, sacrificing beauty.  I sought purity in functional and visual efficiency. Ruthlessly minimize steps for frequent tasks. Press one button to power on and see your entire day’s schedule in a split second. Beauty wasn’t problematic in principle, but it was in practice–back then it would have required making a painfully slow and bulky mobile device.

Unfortunately, an interface optimized for stylus-based input for calendar and contacts (and 1995 hardware) cannot by definition be optimized for a keyboard-based phone with email, browser and camera.  Palm OS took us pretty far, but the purity was lost.  Apple started with a clean slate and succeeded with a new form of purity.

Palm later came back with webOS, bringing back beauty and fresh innovations to the interface. But I’d like to see a comeback for some of the ruthless efficiency of old. Maybe a few extra seconds doesn’t bother many people. But an iPhone processor is 37.5 times faster than a Pilot processor was.  I refuse to believe I’ll never be able to look up a phone number as quickly as I could fifteen years ago.