Idea #12: Create a matrix to predict people's decisions

Description
I was walking down the Metro platform on my way home when it hit me: people are completely predictable.

Not long ago I read Phillip K. Dick's Exegesis, which lead me to immediately spot a book with an illustration of his face on the cover in a simulation of a circuit board, called How to Build an Android: The True Story of Phillip K. Dick's Robotic Resurrection by David F. Duffy. That got me interested in reading more about artificial intelligence and the way the brain functions, so I read Ray Kruzweil's How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed. Kurzweil really drives home the concept of the brain as a pattern recognizing machine, starting with low level pattern recognition and building up hierarchically to more complex patterns. But the idea that suddenly struck me was the fact that essentially, the brain responds to stimuli based on past experience. And also based on inherent structure - or what people would normally refer to as personality.

It's a controversial idea, but I think we've all been misguided by the poetic idea that we are complex beings whose inner workings are pretty much unknowable and ultimately unpredictable. I realized that was bullshit. We just don't know enough about ourselves to accept that we're all basically reacting to the world based on our past experience and the way our personhood has shaped. There are all kinds of scientific studies out there that show how we are affected (either consciously or sub-consciously) by various situational and experiential criteria, that there had to be a way to form a model to accurately describe, with a somewhat high degree of probability anyways, a person's decision.

I came up with the idea of creating some kind of matrix to represent the factors that shape the person (a subject profile) and the factors that frame the decision to be made (the circumstances). In the column headings of my spreadsheet, I listed a combination of personality dimensions based on the Five-Factor Model (the nature aspect) and personal experience/socio-economic status/education (the nurture aspect), lifestyle practices, and emotional state. Together, these factors contribute to the development of habits that subjects fall back on in response to stimuli. In my rows, I listed a series of questions about the decision, such as whether it required an immediate response, whether the person affected is friendly or not, the expected outcomes of the decision, and other things that people take into account  when considering how to respond to a decision. 

The decision itself would be framed in simple terms of positive, neutral, or negative. There are a wide variety of reactions that a person can have, but mostly they boil down to a few types of responses that are framed in these three terms.

Steps
1) Create a matrix to contain all the criteria that shape the subject's experience and personality, and the factors included in the event.
2) Research the scientific basis for certain criteria and factors, to ensure it's based on proven ground.
3) Design a program to score a subject's responses to a questionnaire, creating a subject profile. Figure out how to weight the criteria based on expected impact.
4) Create a survey with questions presenting a situation and requesting a decision. The questions would be like those questions presenting moral dilemmas (for example, "A train is speeding toward a person on the tracks. Do you pull the switch and divert it to a crowd of old people?"). 
5) Have a computer program answer this survey using the subject profile as a guide. Compare answers with the subject's completed survey.
6) Collect as many surveys as possible. Revise program based on collected data for more accuracy.
7) Sell to some tech firm as an amazing new model for artificial intelligence. 

Enthusiam: Crazy-high. Nothing like believing you've designed something totally original and brilliant. (Unless you tell me someone out there has already figured this out).
Practicality: Ambitious-much? This is an all-encompassing model that is way beyond my field of study.
Difficulty: With the knowledge demanded, either I spend years studying up, or I get folks to help. Any computer programmers out there interested in helping?

Idea #10: Re-learn Russian

Description
Learning a language is either a commitment to re-learning for the rest of your life, or it's a continuous source of guilt for the rest of your life. Or in my case, it's both. I put the work in, so I have to keep up on it periodically to keep from feeling like the all the time I spent in classes isn't wasted. And when I let it slip, I feel guilty for not keeping up on it and letting the investment in learning the language go to waste.

I studied Russian for three years in college, spent a semester studying in Moscow. I've studied it off and on over the years, but after a while it's nice to let it go for a bit and study other things, even other languages. I tried reviewing my Russian while studying Spanish once, trading off days (Monday is Spanish day, Tuesday is Russian day, etc.) but that really doesn't work very well. And it's exhausting. So I let my Russian slip into disuse. I could always come back to it, I told myself.

Knowledge is like muscle power. Time spent building muscle up is never wasted, because the muscle mass never completely fades away, and it comes back with a little time spent lifting weights again. Same with languages - the base vocabulary is always there, or can be refreshed fairly quickly.

So I'm going to refresh and re-learn Russian. Except I'm going to start with building up my basic vocabulary again. Use new apps (which didn't exist when I was in college) to learn all the words I need to learn. Or rather, should have learned - it's amazing how many basic words I never really learned. I think I always needed to study more vocabulary, but when you're in class you just jump through the grammar and never really invest in building up a huge vocabulary.

Steps
1) Learn common, necessary words.
2) Refresh my knowledge of grammar. (Ugh, six cases).
3) Learn more words.
4) Read Russian Twitter feeds. Get used to common usage.
5) Listen to Russian language podcasts.
6) Watch Russian movies.
7) Surf Russian websites.
8) Read more Russian literature. Start with simple stories. Maybe even get my hands on kid's books instead of jumping straight to Gogol and Chekhov.

And further down the road, when I get more comfortable with it:
9) Join some Russian conversational Meet-up groups in the area, and actually practice speaking.
10) Post some replies to online posts by Russian-speakers, another way to practice using it, instead of just reading it.

Enthusiam: Temporary. Enthusiasm for languages usually fades, so I'm going to try to ride this one for as long as I can.
Practicality: Can I study Russian while I read other books in English? I think my enthusiasm would last longer if I don't start longing for something easy to read on the Metro.
Difficulty: Is learning a language ever easy?

Idea #7: Study neurology to better understand why I do things

Description
"Why do we do what we do?"

Google that phrase. You'll bring up self-help speeches by Tony Robbins, the Amazon page for the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, an article on a New York Times blog, a Harvard Business Review blog, and many other references links to blogs, book reviews, news articles, etc. There's no shortage of pondering about the reasons behind our actions. But up until a few months ago, I thought of the answers only in terms of philosophical conjecture, with theorized assumptions about human behavior.

But then in March I stumbled across a neuroscience textbook in a small thrift shop while driving through the frozen and snow covered plains of Idaho. And I'd just been thinking about reading a book on neuroscience! I thought to myself as I thumbed through the pages. I'd been planning to read something more friendly to the liberal arts student, but if it was going to land in my way, I was going to read it.

It was published in 1996, but I figured I could catch up with some other, more recent things that had happened since then. As it turned out, there was quite a lot - the textbook doesn't even mention the MRI or fMRI until the last chapter. Any neuroscience book on the shelves today will be at least 75% filled with references to lessons from MRI studies.

But I learned a hell of a lot anyways, since much of our knowledge comes from animal studies. Like it or not you animal rights activists, but most of the time what we know about how the brain works comes from sticking electrodes into the brain of monkeys (or other primates, like college students) and mice. And then I kept it up with more books that report on what we've learned about the brain and what we can do with that information: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, Imagine by Jonah Lehrer, Brain Rules by John  Medina, and An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman. Let me tell you, I recommend any of those books even if you haven't read a neuroscience textbook, but I was just glad I had read the textbook so I was already familiar with the parts of the brain these authors reference in their books.

And after all this studying up on the science of the brain, you know what I've learned: most of what we do is more reaction than action.

Think about it: our brains are wired to react to events in split-second increments. Most of the time, we rely on instinct or on learned habits. Something happens, our brain defaults to previous patterns, and we act based on past behavior. Or we experience a flood of emotion (i.e., a flood of chemicals flowing from our neurons) and we act in response.

What you hear in your brain from that endless self-talk telling you why you're doing what you're doing? That's just the language center in the left side of your brain lending a voice to describe what you're feeling and what you're doing about it. But the fact is, that language center (most likely Broca's area, just above your left ear, FYI) is playing catch-up: you're in the act long before you describe to yourself what you're doing. Hence the reason we often reply "I don't know!" when someone asks us why the hell we did what we just did in a heated moment of panic. We haven't had time to tell ourselves why we did it.

So you know what this means to me? I don't know what actions could legitimately be called "original." We think we're doing things for our own original reasons. But you know what? It's not original We're reacting. We're responding. We're acting out of habit, just the way we did it last time. Maybe we'll try something a little different this time, hoping for a better outcome. But is that an original idea? Did we come up with that ourselves, or did we borrow it from something we read about, heard from a friend, or saw in a movie?

We are big, organic robots, and yet the best computers still can't perfectly replicate our actions. Perhaps it's because they act from rules of logic instead of rules of learned habit.

Okay, my essay is over. So what's the goddamned hare-brain idea?
Figure out how to act not from habit or emotion, but from that deep, untapped well of insight in my brain.

Steps
1) Understand better my reasons for doing things. Identify cues, responses, and rewards.
2) Figure out where to substitute better responses.
3) Meditate, and therefore learn to separate myself from the responsive mind (the mind that only reacts to impulses, emotions, and cures).
3) Act with original, untarnished intention.

Enthusiam:  On-going. I devour any book, magazine article, or news report on brain science.

Practicality:  Depends on the consistency of practice.

Difficulty:  When is self-discovery ever as simple as it sounds?

One note: the image of the brain pasted above is from the newest, most advanced and detailed high-definition 3-D imaging of the human brain ever created. In case you think I'm exaggerating, consider this: for most of human history, the way we have viewed the brain was either with a corpse (with no brain activity to observe) or through images of the living brain that showed clusters of activity. PET scans, MRIs, fMRIs - all of these shows bright lights where clusters of activity in the brain respond to things like questions asked of the subjects or images viewed by the subjects, or actions made by the subject. (Fun fact: we've learned about the brain on sex by putting people in MRI machines and having them masturbate).

But you know what each bright light on one of those brain images represents? Millions of neurons firing at that moment. Neurons fire for very specific reasons: one fires when it recognizes a line you see at 90 degrees, another fires when it recognizes a line at 95 degrees, and so on. One fires when you see the color red, another fires when you see a different shade of red, and so on. Add that up, and you can imagine how many neurons are involved in looking at just a red square. Multiply that by millions more, and you can see why scientists estimate the number of neurons in the brain to be in the 100's of billions. And all we can do right now is make a rough estimate as to what parts of the brain respond when you ask someone a question, or show them a picture, or have them perform an action.

So my point is that we are finally getting to the point of narrowing our views of the brain down to extremely tiny proportions. That high-def 3-D scanner can view brain structures as small as 20 microns, which is 50 times smaller than than images from the best MRI scanners. Fuckin' amazing, no?

http://news.discovery.com/tech/biotechnology/brain-ultra-high-res-3d-130620.htm

Idea: #5: Become a Bike Merchant

Description
I could fix up downtrodden bikes I find on the cheap and re-sell them on Craigslist for a small profit. I've been working on my own bikes for years, but it wasn't until I completely disassembled, painted, and reassembled a tandem bike I found abandoned by the metro. (For the record, it in terrible shape: completely rusted, and left unlocked several feet from the bike rack. Therefore, I maintain it was abandoned).  After obsessively working on it for two weeks straight, I have a glorious new bike, and ambitions to do the same with others.

Steps
1) Salvage bikes found on craigslist or elsewhere, where the owners are practically giving them away to get rid of them.
2) Fix them with new parts, maybe even paint.
3) Resell them on craigslist or elsewhere.

Originality: I would have said High a few years ago. Then bike-obsessed hipsters came along.

Enthusiam: I was on a high after finishing that monster of a project with the tandem bike. Now, it just seems like a lot of unnecessary work for only a little profit.

Practicality: Depends on the bike. I'm sure there are some hipsters out there who want old bikes, right?

Difficulty: Also depends on the bike. Now that I think about it, I've only fixed up three bikes in my life. There are professionals out there who do this all time, and with good bikes. 

Final Note: Know anyone in the market for a tandem bike?

Idea #4: Apprendre le Français en 15 Minutes Tous les Jours

Description
I studied German in high school, Russian in college and grad school, and Spanish off and on over the years with a few books here and a few classes there. What's one more language? Here's the idea for those who do not know enough French already to read the title of this post: learn French in 15 minutes a day.

Granted, I can't speak any of these languages fluently at the moment as I am out of practice (especially my German, which I've barely touched since senior year in '99). Not long ago I heard an interview on NPR with the author of Babel No More, Michael Erard, who talked about "hyperpolyglots" he wrote about - people who have learned dozens of languages. There was another author on the show who talked about people who picked up multiple musical instruments over their lifetimes - the similarity between musical instruments and languages being that there is an underlying structure to the sounds used. Erard talked about learners of multiple languages or instruments seeming to have "plasticity," or the flexibility and desire to focus on learning new things. I also remember hearing somewhere about a person who studied multiple languages at a time by only studying each language 15 minutes at a time, then moving on to something else for the rest of the day. It's sort of a tortoise vs. hare approach.

And some might think: It's not possible to learn a language without a teacher. Actually, many of the languages these polyglots picked up are self-taught. Now, the degree to which they actually could use the language may very, but a teacher is not required so long as their is practice and the ability to learn from mistakes. I learned that from reading the blog of Tim Ferriss, whose opinion is that classes are more like training wheels - the sooner they come off and you start practicing for reals, the better.

Diligently studying French in the Metro

So I thought, how about I just start learning French? I've always wanted to, so how about I start with a book on my 20 minute metro rides to work?


Steps
1) Purchase a decent book that teaches French.
2) Spend 15-30 minutes each day studying the underlying grammar, and most-needed vocabulary, listening to the CD that comes with the book for pronunciation.
3) Improve on the basic French ability: Read blogs or Twitter feeds from French speakers to get a beeter sense of common French usage. Watch TV shows and movies in French.
4) Practice: write sentences in French. Have short conversations with French speakers. 

Originality: Doesn't everyone say they want to learn a language? Buy a few tapes, go to some classes, and then before long it's dropped and the tapes and books collect dust on the shelf. In fact, I've got those for Mandarin Chinese and Philippines Tagalog on my shelf.

Enthusiam: So far I've kept it up for a couple months. But I've also been thinking of doing this for years - now is just when I seized the initiative.

Practicality:  The key here is that I also studied other languages. That means I have already learned three things that first-time language learners (or rather, first time second language learners) have to figure out:
1) How a language is structured; i.e. the basic grammatical concepts of any language;
2) How to go about learning a language: listening for proper pronunciation, common words to study, etc.; and
3) What works best for me: Flashcards, grammar books, writing practice sentences, and (when I can bring myself to) speaking with others.

Difficulty: Learning a lnaguage to any point of actual proficiency is hard - it takes a lot of time and practice. Sure I can learn French - the question is rather "how well?"