The nature of will. On the forces that drive.

I once wrote a post titled: ‘To live or not to live. That isn’t really a question’ for my old blog: http://oftheforge.blogspot.com. I dealt with the idea of the human desire to exist, live and fight for his or her life when all evidence points to the magnificent insignificantness of our existence. I came to the conclusion that we live simply because we want to live. And that those bloodlines who didn’t would quickly be weeded out by natural selection. Here I’m going to try and talk about the (related) idea of ‘will’.

The next few paragraphs will be dreary and serious. Bear with me. They are important.

As an added note: these are my ideas alone. I haven't taken the trouble to read through more than Wikipedia or talk to someone who’s devoted any amount of time and study to this. Well, here we go:

A person who chooses not to steal because the Ten Commandments said so would be exercising free will because it was their choice to follow the Ten Commandments Someone who independently forms their own moral system or who composes a musical composition pleasing to themselves. however, would be exercising an act of will. –Wikipedia, on Nietzsche’s perspective

Nietzsche clearly felt that will was something that made us act in a certain way. That something was his higher ‘an act of will’ when it was somehow internally motivated. I disagree. I believe that his perspective is an abstraction of my more general principle:

Will is the ability/practice to put/of putting a larger long term gain* ahead of a smaller short term gain*.

-*Gain is some tangible, visible or perceived benefit whether internal or external. It should be applied in the broadest sense possible, applying to both the trivial and the grand. Also, it is important that the idea of ‘larger’ and ‘longer term’ be applied very liberally. A situation where someone does B instead of A or C, where A is the most immediate and easiest option, B is the middle choice and C the ultimate ‘best choice’ is still exercising ‘will’ as defined above. In this case C is simply disregarded and B is taken as the more ‘difficult’ yet ‘better’ ‘longer term’ ‘gain’ according to that person’s inner reasoning when compared to A. – Me.

Starting with that first principle, we can derive Nietzsche as follows: In the 10 commandments case the smaller, short term gain was the wealth the theft would bring him. The longer term gains (of not doing so) are several – the internal tangible benefit of not having to deal with his conscience, the visible benefit of not being caught and punished and the perceived benefit of being admitted to heaven having lived a virtuous life. The second case is more interesting. For this we must analyse the concept of ‘pleasing to themselves’. I believe that the idea of satisfying oneself can be looked upon as a combination of a  sense of achievement, as simple pleasure and as a stepping stone to something bigger (such as acquiring a mate or future success). All these are, I believe, things our minds trick ourselves into doing as they increase the probability that our Genes will survive. In this sense, my definition holds as the composer is giving up the small gain of lazing around and having fun for the perceived greater, longer term goal of becoming a more eligible mate and more successful person in all. Do note that it is not required for this process to be carried out entirely consciously. Our minds trick us with abstractions. Thus, we simply note that an extra helping of Kesari (a sweet from south India, which you’ll love!) is ‘bad’ rather than trace its effects on our health and thus our eligibility as mates and our efficiency at doing other, advantageous things before denying ourselves it.

One important thing to note is exactly what I have intended to do with my definition of will. I wanted a definition that would apply to all scenarios, especially, situations where a person could be called ‘strong willed’ for doing something instead of some other thing. In the second case I have not actually reconciled Nietzsche's idea of free will with mine. I have simply explained how my definition satisfies an act of free will (i.e. the motivation to do something like that) but not the specifications of that free will itself. I am separating the concept of free-will, the idea of choice and non-determinism, from ‘will’, the somewhat abstract idea of force and power we associate with the word ‘will’.

Volition or will is the cognitive process by which an individual decides on and commits to a particular course of action. It is defined as purposive striving. – Wikipedia on ‘Volition’

Again, this straddles the line between my ‘will’ and the idea of free will. I have tried to define the kind of will it takes to drive a human against all perceived odds. The kind of will you find possessed by heroes ancient (Hector et all etc) and in modern graphic literature (Batman, say) as almost a power that is as important as super-strength or speed. ‘purposive striving’ is closer to what I’m getting at; obviously, it derives from my definition too – why would you sacrifice your immediate comfort to ‘strive’ unless some greater reward lay at the end?

At this point, having discussed several approaches to ‘the will that motivates’, I have hopefully convinced you that my definition of ‘will’ is a good basis for understanding that aspect of the human psyche. Before I get to the point of this post I’d like to address another point: My definition can act repetitively (recursively if you will… no pun intended). For example: in the example given as an addendum to my definition a person chose B out of A, B, C where they lie in increasing order of ‘gain’ and ‘long term-ness’. Here my definition is ideally applied twice. In the first B was chosen disregarding C. Here the person is ‘weak-willed’ as, in the act of deciding on the ultimate objective the ‘best’ one was given up for something easier. He, however, is still ‘strong-willed’ in pursuing B instead of the immediate comfort that A would provide. I am not specifying any limits to these ideas. A person who gets out of the way of a speeding car is still accounted for because he/she took the effort of moving (effort toward the longer term gain of staying alive) as opposed to the ‘easy’ option of simply staying put. This application might seem weird at first, but I feel that a certain amount of ‘will’ is built into our instincts. Doing something to avoid almost immediate pain and suffering instead of just sitting there and enjoying the even more immediate lack of exertion still counts!

And now to the point of it all- isn’t the idea of ‘will’ beautiful? It is so abstract, so belonging to the realm of grander things. But it is something we experience, within ourselves, every day of our lives. I am exercising my will when I write this. I could have simply slept or played another game of Quake. But I didn’t. Why? Well, I don’t really know. All I get from my head is that I’m doing something ‘good’. What my head thinks It’ll result in is beyond the ‘conscious me’. Doesn’t that intrigue you?

I simply want to peer into that great, dark mystery that is the human mind. And I don’t think that it is very complex in its basis at all. I believe that it is just a few rules (like this one) applied over and over again, in inconceivably complex ways. Each of those rules are simple products of natural selection (Indeed, the idea of ‘will’, especially as I have defined it, is an obvious aid to our survival) yet they have resulted in something so much more impressive than anything else around us. We build ships to the planets and cities that tower above all. Our nearest ancestors, who are supposedly, 98% like us would be lucky to build a misshapen club. How on earth is that possible? I refuse to subscribe to any of the silly ideas (read: supernatural explanations) that many rely to- they answer nothing. I yearn to answer that question; to understand ‘us’, ‘we’, ‘you’ and ‘I’. Because hopefully, one day, I’ll be able to improve upon it.

Our little friends to be

During a recent visit to the US, while roaming around a mall I happened upon a stall of Roombas. A Roomba is a vacuum cleaning robot. It has enough intelligence (and the required sensors, actuators etc etc) to navigate around a room avoiding obstacles like chairs, cables, stairs and cats and use a built in vacuum cleaner to clean the carpets. Once done it makes its way back to the base station and charges itself. It does all this without the any human interference. They cost a couple hundred dollars, that's less than most mid range phones, though I doubt anybody actually uses one as their primary mode of carpet cleaning. I’ve read that they aren’t really all that good at it – they don't work well for multiple rooms, they tend to miss corners and they get stuck from time to time.

Obviously, a Roomba isn’t what we thought we’d have by 2009 way back in the 1960s (say). Back then we thought we’d have intelligent humanoids who could do almost all that we take for granted in humans. And we kinda assumed we’d be far enough along for interesting evening gossip to consist of tales of Mrs Parker’s ‘special’ relationship with her new mark IV (again, say). But then again, we also assumed we’d have rocket ships to Jupiter, ray guns and flying cars. Sadly, as a prudish Victorian would remark at all that (especially Mrs Parker): Alas! Taws' not to be!

So what happened? Where exactly did all those wonderful dreams fall out? Have we just not worked hard enough? Is the KGB responsible for it all? Or did we just hope for a little too much in our naiveté? I’d wager on the last one.

See, building a robot that works in the real world is just not easy. There are too many little things that keep popping up that are so difficult to solve (especially with the constraints current, available, hardware places on us). For example there is the problem of navigation. A four year old can walk from one end of a room to another without bumping into too many things. So can a rat. A million dollar bot though, might still have problems. Especially if you throw a shoe in its way once its off. Now why is that the case? I think its because of the way we’ve approached robotics so far.

When you’re asked to create a robot that can solve a problem we tend to approach it too mathematically. We give it data (or it collects data) and we then try to calculate the best probable path (to take the example of path finding) using that data. But what is the best path? Given a top down look of a room, a sort of God’s eye, view I’m sure there is one. But you never get that sort of view. What you have to work with is a rat’s eye view. From that perspective the only way forward it to make ‘educated guesses’. For example: ‘That's a shoe in front of me. Shoes are small and light. I can move it out of the way or try to go around it.’. As opposed to: ‘Sensor #4 reports obstacle. can’t…move… 01010101. B.S.O.D’. This  first example illustrates how we tend to work. And that's how a robot will need to work in order to get around.

This is where all those interesting terms that scientists love to sprinkle on their papers come it – neural networks, genetic algorithms and the rest. But exactly what are these? Essentially, they are models of how things in nature work – neural networks model brains and genetic algorithms model evolution. They abstract things and give you a solution (all proven mathematically) but don’t tell you exactly how they got there. For example, a neural network might help a robot recognise a shoe even if its placed at an odd angle, is upside down and is actually one of those silly things from Prada  (as opposed to the sneaker it was originally shown and trained to recognise as ‘shoe’) They offer some hope because they work well when brute computation won’t. But they don’t bode well with me.

Why don’t they? Because of their nature – they are black boxes. They give you a solution, but not the same one every time and not always the best one. And that just won’t do. I want my robots to work the same every time; to be quick, efficient and straightforward while still having that ‘intuitive fuzziness’ we ascribe to living things (and which the aforementioned ‘natural algorithms’ may give us). Why? Because that’s what robots are for damnit! To do all the stupid little things that suck up our time and free ourselves from the drudgery we would otherwise otherwise have go through ourselves. Like the laundry,  making that perfect cup of coffee and cleaning out the kitty litter. We do those things well-ish because our brains consist of one huge neural network which can handle things in the real world, unlike a hard coded system. But we don’t do it perfectly for the same reason – neural networks are fuzzy. We can guess that we’ve added just about enough sugar but don’t know for sure. A robot ought to be able to measure that to the microgram.

So what’s the solution? I think it’ll involve some sort of hybrid. A robot that will have a traditional hard coded ‘core’ that can call* on ‘softer’ biologically inspired modules to do specific things (For example: call* an ‘object recogniser’ to figure out exactly what it is that's blocking its path or call* a ‘path finder’ iteratively to figure out how to get to the socket on the wall while not waking the annoying kitty). But that’s just me thinking aloud now. If you want to know for sure just get back to me in a few years. I’ll have it down pat by then :)

Where does that leave us then? Hopefully, in a few years (or decades if you’re pessimistic) we’ll have a model III to weed the lawn, a type 7 to make us meals and a mark IV to... err… well, ask Mrs Parker. And then we’ll finally have enough time and freedom to look at the big picture and contemplate whatever it is we want to. We’ll be free to dream and build and do all that we never could if we had to go through the chore of keeping ourselves alive and ticking.

I for one can’t wait for the day I’ll get to say hello to the plethora of our little friends to be.