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<DIV>Eshel--Thanks for the papers. And you're very, very right. You
didn't get the credit you deserve for your work, which in many ways is light
years beyond most of the research that's cited in the World Science article on
Intelligent Bacteria.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>And, Todd, many thanks for posting the article. It supports the
underlying arguments of The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain--that all of us
individual social animals from bacteria to humans are modules in a
collective intelligence that follows the laws of a neural net.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The article you posted even supports the notion of "inner judges" and
"self-destruct mechanisms" when it says, "<SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">some
network elements can boost the strength of their own interactions."
This vaguely implies that network elements can also turn their strength
down.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">It's
unfortunate that Jeff Hawkins' model of the way the brain works hasn't been
added to the concept of the neural net. Hawkins says that individual
modules and groupings of modules in a learning machine have to extract the
repeating patterns in their environment. They have to spot
repeating themes, repeating strings of signals that come in one
note at a time like music. Hawkins compares these temporal sequences,
these strings of beads strung out on the thread of time, to
songs. </SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">When
a neuron or a neural grouping gets the hang of one of these songs, it names that
tune, sends the name upward to higher layers of cells, then watches out for
weirdness, for signs in the stream of inputs flowing past that hint
that the tune it called out was not the right one after all. As long
as the melody goes the way it should, the grouping of cells keeps
quiet and lets the higher layers of cortical cells go about their business,
confident that their inferiors have got a handle on the key facts of the
moment.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">When
the tune shows signs that it's NOT the one the lower cells named, then the
mistaken cells send up distress signals and bring the higher cortical elements
in to help figure out just what tune it is. Once that puzzle is solved and
the tune has been properly re-identified, the higher level cells are free to go
about more lofty business--like thinking.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">A
practical example. You're laying in bed with the lights out and the window
open, pondering Descartes and Pascal. You know the room well, so
there's norhing going on to distract you. The closet door is slightly
open. A gust of wind slips comes through
the window. You suddenly notice a really weird shadow moving
where the shadow of the closet door should be. But it looks nothing at all
like the proper shadow of a closet door. You're alarmed. You
drop your airy thinking and try to figure out just what in the world may be
intruding on you-- a break-in artist, a Munster, a monster, or any of a dozen
other frightening possibilities that flick through your brain. Your hair
stands up on the back of your neck. You are scared witless, but you force
yourself to go over to the closet door to check. It turns out that someone
.left a bathrobe on a hanger dangling from the top of the closet door and a bag
you've never seen before leaning against the door's edge. The bag and the
wind-swayed bathrobe have made the shadow of a very strange creature, of a
bizarre bigfoot or worse, of something you've never seen or even imagined
before.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Now
that you've named that tune (bag, bathrobe, wind, and door), the lower levels of
your cortex can go back to silently looking for other potential
oddities, leaving the upper layers of your cortex free to agonize
over how powerless mankind seems in the face of Pascal's immense, empty
universe. And other brain bits can try unsuccesfully to console you
with the meager fact that you think, therefore you am.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">This
picture, badly as I've put it, adds a bit more depth to the elements of the
neural net that were first explicated back in the 1980s, the model I've used
since 1986. Hawkins can upgrade your view of learning machines whether
you're using my quintet of learning machine elements or <SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Klaas
J. Hellingwerf's quartet of properties of a neural net.
</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">What
I've left out is something Hawins mentions only in passing--lateral
inhibition, the competition that uptweaks some elements and down-tweaks
others. Lateral inhibition is important because it's one of the
wrinkles of Hawkins' system in which I suspect the inner judges and resource
shifters--the windfalls that hit those who've got a handle on the problem and
the horrors that descend on those who don't get it--are
hidden.</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">My
quintet of learning machine elements, by
the way, is:</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Conformity
Enforcers</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Diversity
Generators</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Inner
Judges</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Resource
Shifters</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">and</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Intergroup
Tournaments.</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Hellingwerf's
four elements of a neural net are:</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">multiple sub-systems that work in
parallel.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">components that carry out logical
operations</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">auto-amplification (inner
judges)</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">and</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">crosstalk</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT
face=Arial></FONT> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face=Arial>The odd thing is
that these lists of characteristic are not mutually exclusive, they're
additive. Each grabs a handful of the skin of a very big
elephant. It's an elephant I suspect Eshel has often
gotten both arms at least half way around.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT
face=Arial></FONT> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT
face=Arial>Onward--Howard</FONT></P></SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 4/22/2005 7:13:27 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
eshel@physics.ucsd.edu writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>Hi to
all,<BR>The new paper in trends in microibiology is quite interesting but is
limited <BR>in scope (and references) it does not give a reference to our
paper on <BR>Bacterial intelligence published in Trends just 8 months ago. He
also does <BR>not give reference to any of Bassler papers.<BR>Attached are
both papers. All the best, Eshel<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution
of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate
Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution
Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango
Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the
Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political
Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human
Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New
Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology
Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of
Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>