AI & Starbucks Guy
Several years ago I met a strange fellow at a Starbucks in Johnson City, TN. He was wearing overalls and a straw hat. And probably boots.
For those who don’t spend much time in Tennessee, you should know that attire is unusual there now.
I was sitting with a business partner discussing business stuff. I could see a straw hat lurking in our periphery; slowly, ever so slowly, coming closer.
He introduced himself and immediately began expatiating on AI algorithms and their impact on society.
This, a topic we were not discussing, coupled with the outfit, was enough to silence us for a long while.
I have to believe that someone who presents himself as an 1840s farmer and knows the intricacies of algorithmic programming must enjoy shocking the hell out of everyone he speaks with.
My business partner wanted nothing to do with this situation. As the monologue ensued, he began to retreat gingerly with his chair, a few inches at a time.
Somehow he was outside on the patio the next time I noticed him, enjoying his latte.
Everything in the universe can be explained rationally, said the farmer. Humans are simply algorithms. A parent loves their kids because nature has programmed them through millions of years of evolution — love isn’t real because it can’t be quantified. They’re simply feeling the effects of the algorithm.
My excuse for engaging him is that I spent my first two years in graduate school writing AI algorithms, plus it was getting awkward, so it seemed like I should respond at some point to make it a dialogue.
Imagine his surprise when some random dude he met in Starbucks actually knew anything at all about AI and math.
I brought up Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Godel showed that in any consistent mathematical system, there will always be true statements that cannot be proven. His mathematical proofs show the limits of rationality, so it can’t explain everything.
Not true, he said, it can.
I was struck by how certain he was about everything.
This steered me toward a topic I find more intriguing — neuroscience. I told him he was more likely left brain dominant than he was correct about the ontological nature of reality. After all, we’re just a couple of guys at Starbucks wearing half a straw hat, on average.
Irrelevant, he asserted.
Inadvisedly, I brought up a now-famous experiment where Marcel Kinsbourne studied how the cerebral hemispheres differ in perceiving truth.
The experiment goes like this: They asked subjects to evaluate the validity of conclusions derived from syllogisms. But the syllogisms were inconsistent: the major premise was true, but the minor premise was false. An example from the experiment:
- All monkeys climb trees (true)
- The porcupine is a monkey (false)
- The porcupine climbs trees
Subjects were asked to draw conclusions under three conditions: 1) normal brain state, 2) the right brain hemisphere isolated (medically), and 3) the left brain hemisphere isolated (also medically).
The results were remarkably consistent across subjects and scenarios. Subjects were asked questions about the syllogisms, such as:
Does the porcupine climb trees?
The answers followed this pattern:
In a normal brain state with both hemispheres active, the subject says it’s false that “It does not climb, the porcupine runs on the ground; it’s prickly, it’s not a monkey.”
With only the right hemisphere active, the subject declares it false, saying, “How can it climb trees — it’s not a monkey, it’s wrong here!” When the experimenter explains that the conclusion must follow from the premises, she responds indignantly, “But the porcupine is not a monkey!”
With only the left hemisphere active, the subject says it’s true that “The porcupine climbs trees since it is a monkey.” When the experimenter questions, “But is the porcupine a monkey?”, she acknowledges it is not. Yet, when faced with the syllogism again, she appears somewhat puzzled but maintains it is true because “That’s what is written on the card.”
If you work in IT, you should wear a shirt that reads: “That’s what is written on the card!”
The left hemisphere closes to certainties and sees parts and details; the right opens to possibilities and sees the big picture.
Mentioning the experiment sent the farmer into a long rant about logic and philosophy that is hard to describe. Suppose you email someone: “Hi John, Your emails are too long, Regards, Dan,” and John replies with a 300-page manifesto rationalizing long emails. It was kind of like that.
Or launching a denial of service attack on ChatGPT.
I discovered I’m not that interested in figuring out the true nature of reality. Too hard.
I have trouble with tax forms and TV remotes. I have two TVs in my den and each remote controls both TVs. I frequently forget this and turn one TV off and the other comes on, or mute one and the other unmutes. And round and round we go.
I realize I should be able to change one remote frequency. I tried, but it turned on and off my color LED lights and made them blink which is even more annoying. So I changed it back.
So now I just deal with it.
The way someone approaches extremely difficult problems tells us more about how they think than what they think. Opinions on the future of AI are like this.
Our brain hemispheres are like eyes that can see aspects of reality — one offers a 360-degree view of the world from a broad perspective, and the other provides a narrow, 4-degree, close-up view of the world where we can see the mechanical arrangement of how things work (according to the world’s leading thinker on this subject).
There’s no evidence that we’re near smart enough to bridge the gap between these. We might be. Or it could be like attempting to benchpress the sun.
All we know for sure is our brain gives us two versions of reality and we combine them to make sense of the world.
So, I’ll defer to my right hemisphere and be happy with the bigger picture.
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