Fans of the work of Andy Clark and in particular his views on cyborgs will be pleased to note that his writing about cyborgs is the focus of a special issue of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Steve Fuller on the Dover Trial
Here is a post on John Wilkins’ Evolving Thoughts bog that picks up on Sahotra Sarkar’s review of Steve Fuller’s latest book in the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. The conflict between Fuller and his critics is sure run and run with ever increasing bitterness.
A minor point. Sarkar writes that: “He [Fuller] is widely credited for the subject and journal of Social Epistemology.” The latter is true; the former is most certainly false.
The Expert Mind
There’s a nice article in Scientific American entitled “The Expert Mind: Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well.” What struck me was the excerpt below which seems to be grist for the connectionist mill in that the expert is not confronted with absolute novelty, unlike the weaker player that inevitably searches a “storehouse” of options. The expert through experience has a relational memory thereby not only coming up with a resolution quicker but by-passing a whole swarth of less salient options. This also brings to mind the Heidegger-Dreyfus line of our well-honed tacit expertise as opposed to explicit inferential capacity.
Recent research has shown that de Groot’s findings reflected in part the nature of his chosen test positions. A position in which extensive, accurate calculation is critical will allow the grandmasters to show their stuff, as it were, and they will then search more deeply along the branching tree of possible moves than the amateur can hope to do. So, too, experienced physicists may on occasion examine more possibilities than physics students do. Yet in both cases, the expert relies not so much on an intrinsically stronger power of analysis as on a store of structured knowledge. When confronted with a difficult position, a weaker player may calculate for half an hour, often looking many moves ahead, yet miss the right continuation, whereas a grandmaster sees the move immediately, without consciously analyzing anything at all.
What’s Wrong With CSI
I’ve had several requests to make this recent article available despite it still being freely available on the Forbes site (I know there have been some annoying pop-up advertisement windows.) Anyway, check out Roger’s co-authored article for EPISTEME on this topic: Epistemics for Forensics.
Forensic evidence doesn’t always tell the truth.
Forensic evidence is foolproof, right? It’s how those clever cops on CSI always catch the killer. DNA evidence springs innocent men from prison. Fingerprints nab the bad guys.
If only forensics were that reliable. Instead, to judge by the most comprehensive study on the reliability of forensic evidence to date, the error rate is more than 10% in five categories of analysis, including fiber, paint and body fluids. (Meaning: When the expert says specimen X matches source Y, there’s a 10% probability he’s wrong.) DNA and fingerprints are more reliable but still not foolproof. The 1995 study, in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, looked at proficiency tests labs take to see whether their work is sound.
More recent studies have also shown problems. Though a 2005 study in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology suggests a fingerprint false-positive rate a bit below 1%, a widely read 2006 experiment shows an alarming 4% false-positive rate.
Yet the public sees errors as gross anomalies. Like the time the FBI wrongly linked an Oregon attorney named Brandon Mayfield to the 2004 Madrid commuter train bombing that killed 200 people. The FBI had claimed a 100% match between fingerprints found at the scene and Mayfield, who was held for two weeks in federal custody. When the Spanish National Police got the real perpetrator, an Algerian named Ouhnane Daoud, the FBI had to admit its mistake. Mayfield accepted a $2 million settlement from the government.
Another debacle, this time involving DNA testing: Josiah Sutton served four and a half years for rape after the Houston Crime Lab tied him to crime-scene DNA. The lab was later found to be rife with problems, including a leaky roof that let rainwater contaminate evidence. Sutton was proclaimed innocent in 2004 and awarded $118,000 in reparations the next year.
Forensic evidence is also used in white-collar cases. In the Martha Stewart trial, government forensic scientist Larry F. Stewart (no relation to Martha) testified that he had performed incriminating tests on the famous “@60” written next to “ImClone(nasdaq: IMCL – news – people )” on a worksheet used to record Martha Stewart’s securities positions. The notation suggested that she had a long-standing agreement to sell ImClone should the price hit $60, which would have cleared her of insider trading. Larry Stewart said his tests showed the potentially exonerating notation was made with different ink, thereby suggesting that it might have been added later.
When the court learned that someone else performed the tests he claimed to have done himself, Larry Stewart was tried for perjury. The tester had done an incomplete job, failing to compare the “@60” ink to all the other ink on the page. (Larry Stewart was acquitted.)
How can we preserve the usefulness of forensic evidence while protecting the public when it breaks down? The core problem with the forensic system is monopoly. Once evidence goes to one lab, it is rarely examined by any other. That needs to change. Each jurisdiction should include several competing labs. Occasionally the same DNA evidence, for instance, could be sent to three different labs for analysis.
This procedure may seem like a waste. But such checks would save taxpayer money. Extra tests are inexpensive compared to the cost of error, including the cost of incarcerating the wrongfully convicted. A forthcoming study I wrote for the Independent Institute (a government-reform think tank) shows that independent triplicate fingerprint examinations in felony cases would not only eliminate most false convictions that result from fingerprint errors but also would reduce the cost of criminal justice if the false-positive error rate is more than 0.115%, or about one in a thousand.
Other reforms should include making labs independent of law enforcement and a requirement for blind testing. When crime labs are part of the police department, some forensic experts make mistakes out of an unconscious desire to help their “clients,” the police and prosecution. Independence and blind testing prevent that. Creating the right to a forensic expert for the defense would help restore the imbalance in scientific firepower that too often exists between prosecution and defense. Private labs are subject to civil liability claims and administrative fines, giving them financial incentives to get it right.
Roger Koppl is a professor of Economics and Finance at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Silberman College of Business and a Director of the Institute for Forensic Science Administration.
Swarm Robotics
Here is a BBC report from A.I. XI
Social Indentity
As usual, Dan Little has posted some thoughtful reflections on the multifarious tributaries that feed into the complex that is social identity. It brings to mind a recent correspondence I had with someone who was adamant that I call them by their “new” name (legally changed by deed poll), someone who I happened to know under their birth name.
My response to her was that legal identity is but one component of, and the shallowest notion of, the complex that is social identity. She will always be known as XXXXXX in the minds of those who knew her in another context and that this is beyond her control. Such is the dynamics of social reality.
Alzheimer’s
Here’s a restrained and sensitive article from the Scotsman on Claude Wischik‘s work on Alzheimer’s disease. The tone of the article matches the low-key disposition and existential focus of Wischik. Speaking to an Alzheimic patient on a regular basis, I have often used synonyms for the metaphor of “tangles”:
Wischik has spent 24 years studying the neurofibrillary ‘tangles’ that first destroy nerve cells critical for memory and then neurons in other parts of the brain in those suffering from Alzheimer’s.
Testimony
EPISTEME 5:2, featuring Roger Koppl, Robert Kurzban and Lawrence Kobilinsky’s paper that has attracted a great deal of press attention is now available online.
Neuroeconomics
While I too am sceptical about the techno-ebullience associated with MRI scans what is interesting about the self-defeating claim in a cheekily entitled Economist article “Do economists need brains?” is this quote:
neuroscience could not transform economics because what goes on inside the brain is irrelevant to the discipline. What matters are the decisions people take—in the jargon, their “revealed preferences”—not the process by which they reach them.
The Economist is referring to an article by Faruk Gul and Wolfgang Pesendorfer entitled “The Case for Mindless Economics.” Now whatever my scepticism, it seems the aforementioned quote is perverse. As the journalist rightly says Hayek certainly understood that markets do not rest upon “rational” behavior (Hayek, 1944, p.64; 1988, pp.53-54) but more importantly appreciated the essential place of mind in any explanation of sociality. This can be found across his work and in his neglected work (1952).
References
Hayek, F. A. (1944/1976). The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hayek, F. A. (1952/1976). The Sensory Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hayek, F. A. (1988). The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Swarm intelligence and traffic patterns
Simon Garnier has found and posted a super little swarm vignette on his website. This is as lucid an introduction to swarm intelligence as one is likely to get. Nice one Simon!
manwithoutqualities 
