Book of the Month: Existential Physics

The tagline 'A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions' grabbed my attention and made me buy this book by Sabine Hossenfelder, whose day job is studying quantum gravity at Frankfurt University.

The questions covered in Existential Physics are a mix of hard science (How did the universe begin? Are humans just bags of atoms or something more?) and speculation (Is the universe conscious? Do copies of us exist in a multiverse?) with some extra stuff that is a bit of both - hard speculation, if you will. 

Along the way, there are some very interesting summaries of what we can say for certain, and some ideas that scientists advocate for that are, at best, ascientific, meaning there is just no way, now, to know. 

The chapter on death and dying and how, on a human level, it illustrates entropy provided a me with a new take on the subject. Although there is no evidence for an "afterlife", and no workable scientific theory for one, the impression individuals make on the universe as "information" is never truly lost - unless it ends up in a black hole. Versions of us sort of might continue to exist, which is weirdly comforting.

I got a bit lost in the discussion about free will and determinism, which cropped up in a couple of places. I can accept that our universe is almost entirely predictable, if an observer had access to enough data and in that sense 'free will' as understood by most people doesn't actually exist. It's not a very intuitive way to approach things though - and Sabine acknowledges this and addresses the issue of holding people to account for their actions, whether those actions are pre-determined or not. There are a few similar diversions from physics into ethics throughout the book.

There is a small section of one of the later chapters that is probably the best precis I have ever read about artificial intelligence at this stage in the development of AI (pp207-210). Sabine outlines what is currently known about trying to create thinking machines and presents a convincing case that the first true AIs will be fragile and will struggle to survive.

"...artificial intelligences at first will be few and one of a kind, and that's how it will remain for a long time. It will take large groups of people and many years to build and train artificial general intelligences. Copying them will not be any easier than copying a human brain. They'll be difficult to fix when broken, because, as with the human brain, we won't beable to separate the hardware from the software. The early ones will die quickly for reasons we will not even comprehend."

That actually made me feel sad for the creations we might bring into being. Sabine also points out that these AIs will most likely be owned by people who are already rich and powerful and will reflect the ethics and interests of their masters. It's a very good point that I've not seen mentioned in other discussions of AI.

Another superb section is the interview with Zeeya Merali, which discusses whether it would be possible to bring another universe into existence. It's certainly doable in theory if beyond human current engineering ability in practice. But if a universe was created then it would separate off almost immediately, and develop detached from our universe. It could expand infinitely and sentient beings could evolve there and we would almost certainly never know, unless we discovered a way to observe other universes (which we can't do now, making the concept of a multiverse ascientific even though lots of scientists talk about it as established fact). 

This leads to a discussion of ethics and morality - what responsibility would the creator(s) of that universe have towards any beings that lived in it? That's an ethical conundrum in its own right. It also opens up the possibility that if it's theoretically possible that we could create universes, then this universe may also have been created in a similar fashion. Not that there is any need for a creator based on what we observe about our universe, but a universe created in a lab would probably look the same as ours from inside. 

Consciousness is a topic that crops up throughout the book. Trying to explain why humans have consciousness is really difficult - it's something that seems to be more than the sum of our parts (our constituent atoms) and if I understood what Sabine was saying, the observations of consciousness in complex combinations of atoms isn't something that could be predicted by just looking at those individual atoms. So, something currently unexplainable is going on. 

The final section of the book is about whether there is any purpose to everything. Sabine concludes that the desire to understand the universe is a meaningful purpose in itself, and I found that a satisfying way to end the book. 

I have read several 'popular science' books over the last few years. I found this harder than any I've read previously. The scientific terms come at the reader quickly and there were several occasions when I needed to re-read paragraphs. Some of the early chapters were particularly hardgoing, but I'm glad I powered through - either I got smarter as the book went on (unlikely) or the concepts were less bound up in mathematical theory so were easier to convey in words that a reader like me could grasp. 

As a plus point, though, Sabine includes a 'Brief Answer' at the end of every chapter which summarises all that has been said before into three or four sentences. I found that very helpful clarifying what I had just read. 

Book of the Month - The Grieving Brain

I did finish this book in February - honest! I've just been slow to blog about it. 

As you may expect, a book about neuroscience and how brains function forced me to really think about what I was reading. That's not because it was hard academic reading. The book is written in a clear, approachable style with personal reminiscences and reflections that break up the summarised scientific research nicely. However, although the writing was light, the subject matter was heavy and so I kept having to stop and put the book down and think about it. 

I discovered this book through the Behavioural Science newsletter. and posted about some of the key points last year. I liked the analogy for grief of trying to navigate through a room in the dark, but someone has moved the furniture so you reach out for something and it's not there. I've written a few times how I miss my Dad the most in places where I would expect to find him. 

This book explains why this happens.

It has to do with how our brains get changed through attachment to people. We expect certain people to be present - caregivers to care for us; lovers to show love to us. Throughout the book, Mary Frances O'Connor explains how scans of the brain illustrate this attachment and which parts of the brains are affected, and then tells stories from her own personal grief experiences that correspond with what the brain science shows. It's both very effective at underlining the point and deeply humanising.

O'Connor's understanding of 'grief' as a concept is that the human brain - her brain, my brain, your brain - is trying to solve a problem. The problem is that an important person is gone from the expected routines and relationships. Grief subsides as the brain learns to fill in that person-shaped hole it expects to be there. Although, for some people that learning doesn't really stick, or never happens at all, and they are trapped in chronic, persistent grief. 

One helpful message was that it is normal to feel fine one minute and utterly bereft the next. Or not. And that, actually, you don't have to feel intense feelings all the time in the immediate aftermath of grief - in fact, it might be more helpful to your healing if you don't, because your brain carries on working through the 'problem' of your important person being absent at a subconscious level and the learning might happen faster that way. 

While we often encourage people to confront their grief and think about the person who died, it might be better to let people be distracted by other things. Forcing people to do 'grief work' might - might - contribute to them mislearning the new shape of the world and cause them to slip into chronic grief syndrome. 

For me, personally, having written several blog posts about grief, this book helped me make sense of a lot of feelings. Missing my Dad after an FA Cup Final, for example, knowing he wouldn't be ringing me up to dissect the game, was my brain learning that there wouldn't be that anticipated post-match conversation. It was a moment when my brain adjusted to circumstances as they were, not the sequence of events it expected.

That's not to belittle grief, quite the reverse. O'Connor makes the point that grief happens because we love people and loving people has an impact on us. Towards the end of the book, there is a moving passage explaining why we continue to love people who have died. Put simply, we can't help it - 

"The physical make up of our brain - the structure of our neurons - has been changed by them. In this sense, you could say that a piece of them physically lives on... these neural connections survive in physical form even after a loved one's death. So, they are not exactly "out there" and they are not exactly "in here" either. You are not one, not two."

I thought that was a beautiful description that helped me to make sense of my experience of grief. 

Grief recedes as the new shape of the world becomes normal

I recently read this article by Mary-Frances O'Connor on the website Behavioural Scientist: Walking in the Dark: Creating a New Virtual Map in Your Brain After Loss. In the article, she explains how our brains create heuristic short cuts that allow us to navigate the world. We mentally construct routes through physical space, and experiences, based on what occupies that space. 

When something is removed from the physical environment, it takes a while for our brains to catch up. We still 'expect' the thing to be there for some time after it has gone. That's why we can often miss landmarks when they are demolished, or feel a little bit lost when a favourite shop closes. 

Mary-Frances O'Connor applies that to grief as well. In addition to mapping the physical environment, our brains also 'map' our social and emotional landscapes. So when someone is removed from that landscape it takes a while for our brains to adjust to their absence. Depending how big a role they play in our lives, it takes longer for our brains to fill in the 'hole' they leave when they die. 

So we experience a dissonance between the world we 'know' in our minds and the world as it really is - we are walking through two different worlds for a while. 

It's not quite as poetic as the description of grief being "love, persevering" that surprised me in the Marvel TV series Wandavision, but I found it a very helpful explanation for the process of grief. More importantly, it helps me rationalise the recession of grief with the passing of time. My brain is learning the new shape of the world without the people I love in it. I'm not a bad person for not missing them so much. I'm re-mapping the world.

There are still moments when I am reminded of the way the world was. During our recent week holidaying in Shropshire, I had an opportunity to visit my Dad's grave, and also the Shrewsbury Town Memorial Garden. 

I find the garden, with the little plaque saying 'Promoted to Glory' (an old Salvation Army phrase that my Dad would have liked) stirs the emotion of loss more than visiting the grave. 

It's not hard to explain why I find the memorial at the football ground more meaningful than the cemetery. I never went to the cemetery with my Dad. I didn't even know it was there until after he died. But I went to the Meadow with him several times. It was one of the places I saw him on the last day I saw him alive.

With a lump in my throat I said 'Well. Dad, here we go again. First home game of the season. I'll give them a cheer for you.' (That was something he used to say, if I was going to a game and he wasn't.)

It proved to be a nostalgic week really. Seeing the Llangollen Railway in reduced circumstances was sad for two reasons - I remember going there with Dad. Even going to the flower show brought back memories of us all going as a family. Dad would have had an opinion on the various problems the organisers were dealing with like having to cancel the evening fireworks display.

Relearning the way the world works takes time. There are still moments when I see something that makes me think of him. Back in May I saw a tote bag in the Ashmolean Museum gift shop that said "History Buff" on the side, and it would have been a perfect gift for him. 

And that made me sad, because I would have bought it back when he was alive and he would have thought it was funny. He always loved the t-shirt we got him with a picture of a trilobite on it saying 'Shropshire fossil'. My brain recognised it as being a good potential present, and still hadn't learned that I don't need to buy funny gifts for my Dad any more. 

My brain is catching up, though. Every time I get caught out by something that triggers an unexpected pang of grief, that's a learning point for my brain. The new world slowly gets mapped and the empty space is slowly filled. 

Neuromarketing - how advertisers could use our brains against us

This is a chunk of an essay I wrote for my MSc. in the module I think has been most interesting so far: External Communications. I previously posted some nuggets from research papers about TV adverts. This is a bit more in-depth. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

A neuroscientist, plotting

In addition to the insights gleaned from cognitive and social psychology, many marketing experts are monitoring the emerging field of neuroscience, the study of physical changes in the brain that underlie thought processes, such as problem-solving, decision-making and recalling memories. Neuroscience proposes “these mechanisms must be rooted in brain function” (Standage and Trappenberg, 2012, p.235). Although electroencephalography has been used to study the effect of marketing materials on the brain since the 1970s, it is the growth in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) procedures that has enabled neuroscience, ‘neuroeconomics’ and ‘neuromarketing’ to develop in the 21st Century (Kenning, Hubert and Linzmajer, 2012, pp.419-426).

Plassmann et al (2015) claim a number of large polling and market research companies with “neuromarketing” departments, used by companies as diverse as the food company, Campbell’s, and the broadcaster, Fox News. While it complements traditional consumer research, Standage and Trappenberg (2012) warn neuroscience is not ready to replace it entirely. There are critics of the neuromarketing approach, such as Addie (2011) who cites the “number of inadequacies” of using fMRI to examine brain functions, and is highly sceptical that neuroscience can actually deliver what it’s proponents claim.

Adopting a cautious approach, Plassmann et al (2015) outline five ways neuroscience could inform advertising strategy: identifying mechanisms, for example what causes consumers to lose control over their buying impulses; measuring implicit processes to explore situations where consumers cannot explain their buying actions; dissociating processes to see which decisions are intuitive reflexes and which are the product of conscious, rational thought; understanding the differences between individuals, which could help advertisers target individuals who are more likely to be susceptible to their messages; and, finally, improve predictions of how consumers are likely to behave. There are also challenges to using neuroscience in this way, including determining whether changes in the physiology of the brain definitely leads to behaviour change.

There have been some applied uses of neuroscience of interest to advertisers. Research reviewed by Kenning, Hubert and Linzmajer (2012) includes that adverts that consumers consider attractive led to brain activity in areas associated with integrating emotions into decision-making and rewards. Adverts rated as highly attractive and highly unattractive were more likely to be remembered. Brain areas associated with ‘rewards’ are also activated when products regarded as status symbols are viewed, with claims that neurological responses to products can then be used to predict purchasing behaviour.

Price has also been shown to have an effect – excessively high prices activate parts of the brain that anticipate losses, reducing the likelihood of a consumer to pick them. Kenning et al propose this could help businesses establish an acceptable ‘price threshold’. Finally, reinforcing the theory outlined by Harris & Sanborn (2014) about sex in advertising, Kenning et al (2012) comment that neuroimaging shows male consumers have the reward centres of their brains triggered by an attractive female face in an advert. This may have implications when businesses are choosing the ‘face’ of a particular advertising campaign.

References

Addie, I.  (2011) Is neuroscience facilitating a new era of the hidden persuader? International Journal of Market Research 53(3), 303-305

Harris, R. & Sanborn, F. (2014) A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication. Abingdon: Routledge

Kenning, P., Hubert, M. & Linzmajer (2012) “Consumer neuroscience” in Wells, V. & Foxall, G. (eds) Handbook of Developments in Consumer Behaviour. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar

Plassmann, H., Venkatraman, V., Huettel, S. & Yoon, C. (2015) Consumer Neuroscience: Applications, Challenges, and Possible Solutions. Journal of Marketing Research 52(4), 427-435

Standage, D. & Trappenberg, T. (2012) “Cognitive neuroscience” in Frankish, K. & Ramsey, W. (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.