Mr Deity returns

As one or two of the two or three regular readers know, I’m impressed by the Mr. Deity shorts. Well, after a delay following the second season, the third season is available. I recommend it.

Robots running amok?

In “Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man,” John Markoff reports on concerns about whether machines might overrun their human creators. It’s the stuff of science fiction, no? Reminds me of the endgame in Sim Earth.

A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Although I pretty much dismiss this concern out of hand (who would build a machine that’s out of control?), I did have a what-if moment.

• If machines ran the world, would they wage wars?
• If machines ran the world, would they immediately take steps to resolve global heating?
• If machines ran the world, would there be capital punishment?
• If machines ran the world, would they behave differently toward each other based on the color of their paint?
• If machines ran the world, would they prevent each other from saying or writing things?
• If machines ran the world, would they worship humans?

Link to Mr. Markoff’s article from the New York Times.

D. Attenborough natural history pieces

The BBC has an audio feature entitled David Attenborough’s Life Stories in which David Attenborough reports about sundry natural history topics. I heard one on local radio about Komodo Dragons and found another on the Web about Archaeopteryx. As usual, Mr. Attenborough’s writing and speaking command attention. Fascinating stuff.

It appears that the BBC site only makes them avialable for a limited time. The page for the Archaeopteryx segment says “Available since Friday with 5 days left.” It’s not clear to which Friday the text refers, especially because it gives a date in late August. I couldn’t find one about the Komodo Dragon, though; he starts with references to a 16th-century author cataloging the types of dragons, not including the Komodo Dragon, and then proceeds to provide a many-minute long account of Komodo behavior (e.g., feeding) and biology (parthenogenesis).

Because it appears to me that the shows are not archived, I recommend repeated trips to the site to check on what’s available there. I need to construct an agent that will go download them for me periodically. Meanwhile, perhaps I shall create a calendar entry that reminds me to check.

Moon walk

Today’s the 40th anniversary of humans’ first walk on Earth’s Moon. For folks who were alive and able to learn about news events in the late 1960s, this was a signal event. To be sure, there were many terrific (as in terrible) things happening at that time, but humankind seemed to stop and marvel at the photos of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Hundreds of millions of people around the world watched as Mr. Armstrong took bouncy steps across the lunarscape.

Apparently, those images were not as good as we could have seen. According to NPR correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce’s story, “Search Is on for Original Apollo 11 Footage,” they were actually the product of a television camera being aimed at a screen displaying higher quality images that were made in a different format than the format used by television at that time. I hope the people who are searching for the originals are successful.

• The Wikipedia entry.
• NASA historian Steven J. Dick’s Why We Explore

Stupid me

A few months ago, I thought that the anniversary of the Apollo mission would be a good reason for a post. So, I drafted one and scheduled it for the day 2009/07/20 when people first stepped onto an extra-terrestrial object. Of course, as anyone who follows the news knows, there are lots (should I make that bold faced?) of reports about Apollo 11 these days. My planned post turns out to be minor blip. Sigh. My misjudgment. See, for example, my pointer to the marvelous “We Choose the Moon.”

Anyway, the post’ll appear soon. And I can laugh at my foolish presumption.

Still, ain’t it amazing that this anniversary is upon us? In a few 100 years (if humans have avoided destroying our local planet), the Apollo 11 flight will surely be a signal marker in Earth’s and Humankind’s history. We Choose the Moon is a fine resource.

We Choose the Moon

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum has launched (ahem) “We Choose The Moon,” a Web site devoted to the historic flight of Apollo 11 that landed humans on Earth’s Moon just about 40 years ago. At 9:32 AM on 16 July the site is set to commemorate the launch by beginning “Stage 2″ at the time of the launch (teehee) of the flight. If one goes to the site now, there are a raft of interactive features illustrating Stage 1 (e.g., President Kennedy’s speech launching [there's that word again] the effort).

It’s a very rich and engaging site: WeChooseTheMoon.org. Enjoy it. Perhaps Cy Quick, who’s pined to see Cape Kennedy and the Rocket Museum at Huntsville, will enjoy it.

Anthropomorphism explained

That guilty look that the pet gives you? It’s a reaction to you, not an expression felt by the dog. Just another example of human’s theory of mind run amuck.

Condition	Owner told dog obeyed	Owner told dog disobeyed
Dog was given treat	Should be guilty; human behavior conveys “not guilty”	Should be guilty; human behavior conveys “guilty”
Dog does not eat treat	Dog’s not guilty; human behavior conveys “not guilty”	Dog’s not guilty; human behavior conveys “guilty”

Alexandra Horowitz of Barnard College in New York (US) studied the cause of the “guilty look” in dogs and reported about it in “Disambiguating the ‘guilty look’: Salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour” in the academic journal Behavioral Processes. She set up situations in which a dog’s master or mistress was told that it had obeyed or not obeyed the owner’s command to not eat a treat, either accurately or inaccurately (see table for conditions). The owner (1) placed a treat near the dog and told the dog not to eat it; (2) left the room briefly; (3) could not see whether the experimenter did or did not fed the dog the treat; (4) returned to the room and was told to greet the dog (it hadn’t eaten the treat) or to scold the dog (it had eaten the treat).

The 14 dogs in the study did not show more guilty look behaviors (e.g., avoiding eye contact, lying down, moving away from the owner, etc.) when they ate the forbidden treat than when they didn’t eat it. They did show more such behaviors depending on whether their owners scolded them or greeted the. That is, their guilty behaviors were responses to the humans’ behavior, not to their own behavior.

Anthropomorphisms are regularly used by owners in describing their dogs. Of interest is whether attributions of understanding and emotions to dogs are sound, or are unwarranted applications of human psychological terms to non-humans. One attribution commonly made to dogs is that the “guilty look” shows that dogs feel guilt at doing a disallowed action. In the current study, this anthropomorphism is empirically tested. The behaviours of 14 domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) were videotaped over a series of trials and analyzed for elements that correspond to an owner-identified “guilty look.” Trials varied the opportunity for dogs to disobey an owner’s command not to eat a desirable treat while the owner was out of the room, and varied the owners’ knowledge of what their dogs did in their absence. The results revealed no difference in behaviours associated with the guilty look. By contrast, more such behaviours were seen in trials when owners scolded their dogs. The effect of scolding was more pronounced when the dogs were obedient, not disobedient. These results indicate that a better description of the so-called guilty look is that it is a response to owner cues, rather than that it shows an appreciation of a misdeed.

Read others’ takes: Elsevier’s Science Blog. Sean Couglin of the BBC in “Can dogs really look ‘guilty?’.” Henry Fountain of the New York Times in “It’s an Owner’s Scolding That Makes a ‘Guilty’ Dog.” Rob Stein of the Washington Post in “Is the Hangdog Look for Real?.”

Kon-Tiki, Columbus, or Chinese?

With apologies to Ozomatli, “Who discovered America?” There are many explorations worthy of mention. Not just “discovering” the lands of the Western Hemisphere. Lot’s of possibilities.

But, as I understand it, there’s work on colonization of Earth’s moon. That’s a bit different. What a concept!

See the story as told by the Los Angeles Times.