Extreme Schnozzes

Ever watch The Most Extreme? If you have, it goes without saying that you thought to yourself, “Self, The Most Extreme would indubitably profit from a ‘Most Extreme Noses’ episode”. And even if that’s not something you’ve thought, well now you’re thinking it! Imagine that. Implanting thoughts is as easy as getting people to read.

So, without further ado, and in no particular order, Martholomew Gumblesworth proudly presents The Arguably Most (But-Honestly-Arbitrary-Given-Lack-of-Quantifying-Criteria) Extreme Noses!

Goblin Shark

When schnoz meets Jaws.

Look at this idiot! It’s amazing he even manages to eat with that enormous snout sticking out of his face. You could probably land planes on that thing. And who knows what it’s good for–it’s probably the product of ridiculous evolutionary female choice selection. Or maybe the Cloverfield monster uses goblin sharks as darts, and only allows those with the biggest noses to survive. In any case, its rostrum exceeds any other shark’s in relative size, which is pretty darn extreme.

Fei Jianjun

Meet Fei Jianjun. One day, he discovered an unpleasant red bump on the tip of his nose, but did not seek medical attention due to poverty. Over the next year, his honker enlarged to the size pictured above, so large that his eyes were literally pushed to sides of his face, earning him “diseased freak status” in his village. As such, Fei rarely left his house as he was thought to be a vector for illness. To boot, it shouldn’t come as much surprise that once your nose swells to the size of an apple that considerable pain results. Eventually, a local hospital offered him free surgery, and a CT scan revealed that the cause of his troubles was a rhinocarcinoma, which they shrank via radiation.

In general, the whole situation is undilutedly awful, but he did get free healthcare out of it. And any nose that gets you free healthcare is an extreme nose.

The Monoclonius

The rhinoceros has a pretty extreme nose. Its name means “nose horn”, after all. But why include a silly rhinoceros on this list when a much larger, much more extreme version of such a nose once sniffed the earth?

Of all the unicorn-like ceratopsids, the monoclonius has by far the largest nose horn. At 2.7 m in height, this brawny beast could snag a white rhino on its horn and toss it like a plush toy. You could also wrap lights around it and pretend it was a small Christmas tree. You know the holidays get extreme when you use a dinosaur nose to supplement decorative traditions.

Adrien Brody

Adrien Brody’s nose is the Mount Everest of Hollywood schnozzes. It dwarfs other actors’ noses and cackles maniacally, screeching tyrannical nose insults in the form of snot rockets. It towers menacingly, Barad-dur-like, growling malediction in the language of Mordor. It snores, and tectonic plates shift. And so on.

Brody’s nose is also probably partially responsible for landing him his role as Jewish-Polish pianist Władysław Szpilman in The Pianist. His masterful portrayal of said role then landed him an Oscar, not to mention the opportunity (which was taken) to ravish Halle Berry with a kiss. Getting an Oscar and making out with Halle Berry? That’s an extreme nose.

The Hammer-Headed Bat

Bats tend to look fairly hilarious. Some have enormous ears, and some have enormous noses. In fact, the aptly-named hammer-headed bat’s nose exceeds the volume of its brain by a factor of at least 2. It also contributes heavily to the species’s sexual dimorphism, with only males possessing the enlarged rostrums. These noses, in addition to lengthened mouth cavities and larynxes, enable male hammer-headed bats to emit loud honks.

It probably comes as no surprise that the caliber of these honks influences how sexually attractive the males are to coeds. This phenomenon can be seen in full-thottle when males gather together, often around riverbanks, to compete for mates in a behavior known as lek mating. Effectively, a gaggle of males sit around trying to out-honk each other while the females fly around listening in for the finest honks, much like a bar scene where scads of males try out their pickup lines. Since nose size contributes to the quality of the honks, females select for the finest, and probably most pronounced, noses. When a nose determines whether one gets laid or not, one must submit to the extremity of said nose. Plus, these fellows can allegedly be used as hammers. And hammers are useful.

Cyrano de Bergerac

Like many great men, the fictional Cyrano de Bergerac falls in love with his cousin, Roxane. And also like many great men, Cyrano is profoundly ugly, due in large part to his large nose, which causes him great distress. People, cruel as they must be to make Cyrano pitiable, say that his nose is large enough to be used as an umbrella.

In the eponymous play, Cyrano demonstrates mastery of duelling, music, wit, and so on. He also writes beautiful love sonnets and the like, but is too shy to approach his buxom cousin with them. Meanwhile, she falls in love with the handsome but stupid bloke who hasn’t the parlance to charm her. This mentally-impaired Adonis asks Cyrano to furnish him with the verbiage to fully woo Roxane, which Cyrano agrees to do. Roxane eventually falls in love with these words, and when she finally discovers that it is Cyrano who was behind them, she falls for him, nose and all. Of course, to be properly depressing/moving, she admits her love to Cyrano as he is dying.

If we are to subscribe to the Sixteen Candles-y notion that ugly people persevere as sharp-witted, successful, and talented, all of Cyrano’s skills owe themselves to his nose. Plus, it can apparently be used to shield people from rain. Totally extreme.

The Proboscis Monkey

This monkey’s nose is so extreme that people just call the animal it’s attached to the proboscis monkey. It’s the nose monkey. You see that guy over there, with the nose? Yeah, that’s the proboscis guy.

As with hammer-headed bats, nose size in proboscis monkeys underscores a sexual dimorphism in the species. While female proboscis monkeys have fairly prominent noses, they don’t quite have the Kilroy-was-here factor that the males do. And, once again as with hammer-headed bats, we can be sure nose size plays into how hot male proboscis monkeys are to the ladies.

It would be fair to say that proboscis monkeys can have erections for noses. As is the case with most cardiovascular animals, proboscis monkeys experience increased heart rate when they’re excited. As the excitement rises, so does the level of blood saturation in their nasal tissue. With noses engorged thus, a resonating chamber is created that can amplify the sound of calls, especially warning signals. This is quite useful; if one proboscis monkey detects danger, he will become fearful and therefore excited, thus making him better at communicating danger to his compatriots. Super-siren nose that makes you look like Squidward? Extreme.

Pinocchio

This kid can’t tell a lie without his nose erupting outward like the Ruyi Jingu Bang when Sun Wukong needs to steal cookies from the top shelf. Think about the implications; to weaponize that honker, all Pinocchio needs to do is stand in front of someone, point his nose at their eye, and say, “I’m a real boy! I’m a real boy!” Too bad he gave up his superpower, it was pretty extreme.

Star-Nosed Mole

Most animals interpret the topology of their environments with favor to a particular sense. Humans favor sight. Dolphins favor sound. Moles favor touch. And the star-nosed mole possesses the most highly-developed touch organs known, right in its nose.

It would be an understatement to say that the star-nosed mole has two hands growing out its face. It wouldn’t even suffice to say it has four. Not to mention that a light knock to your hands does not kill you. Needless to say, star-nosed moles have mighty sensitive sniffers. This super-sensitivity results from clusters of mechanoreceptors that project up through columns of epidermal cells from the dermis up to the skin’s surface. These structures are made of familiar things–skin cells, nerve endings, and so forth–but their arrangement is so specialized as to earn them the title of “organs” (Eimer’s organs, specifically). And a star-nosed mole’s nose has about 25,000 of them, and it’s only 1cm wide. Your nose barely even contains that many tactile nerve endings.

An article in Nature dubbed the star-nosed mole that “fastest-eating animal” (segues to a fastest-eaters edition of The Most Extreme, but that’s for another time). The heavy myelination of Eimer’s organ neurons improves signal transmission from the sense organs to the mole’s brain, where analysis of the edibility of an object can take as little as 120 milliseconds, which borders on the limits of neuronal transmission speed. This animal’s nose helps it evaluate food in 120 milliseconds. Extreme.

As if that wasn’t enough, the star-nosed mole can smell underwater by exhaling nose bubbles onto something it wants to smell and then inhaling them. How extreme is that?

The Elephant

Elephants are sort of extraordinary. They’re the largest living land animals, they mourn their dead, have conveyor belts for teeth, and destroy civilizations when they’re sexually frustrated. Oh and they paint, too.

They also have trunks, which are of course just awesome noses.

Elephant trunks are in many ways the equivalents of human hands. Elephants use them to greet one another, embrace, and play. They use them to pick things up and put food and water in their mouths. They can bathe themselves by sucking up water into the body of the trunk and then spraying it on themselves. They can snorkel. They can pick up tiny seeds without crushing them, plant them, wait for a tree to grow, and then uproot it.  And, naturally, they can use their trunks to forage for or store goods in the butts of other elephants. The trunk is a nose that knows no bounds.

And of course, elephants have stupendous olfactory senses, which are augmented by their ability to direct their trunks towards or away from the sources of aromas. Extreme? Yes.

This post about perceptual semantics dissembles its “seriousness” with broccoli pictures

One of the great human pastimes is disagreeing about things. You deem broccoli horrible? Well, I think it ROCKS. Broccoli rocks, folks–make no bones about it. It’s an intrinsically great food, possibly even a great humanitarian. And people who say otherwise are simply wrong.

Puns induce laughter about as much as broccoli rocks.

An error in reasoning presents itself here; this argument masquerades as an argument over broccoli, but it pertains to something else entirely. It’s a taste-based squabble in broccoli’s clothing. A difference in primary gustatory area associations hidden in a Trojan broccoli flower. What this argument really pertains to is subjective experience, and as soon as that becomes obvious, there can be no argument. You don’t have to agree to disagree, you instead agree that your perceptions differ from those of your broccoli-hating antagonist.

So, we’ve brought up the “S” word. Through a derisive lens, subjectivity appears the guiding star for people who avoid questioning viewpoints, changing their perspectives, and so on. Defining words becomes an especially muddled process; really staunch subjectivists refuse to do it. Anything can mean anything. You ask what kind of chairs a true subjectivist likes; he says, “Define ‘chair'”. You try, but he questions every word you use to define “chair”, creating a geometrically expanding tree diagram of attempted definitions. You argue that using words to question words is internally inconsistent, but you are denied again. And you never find out what kinds of chairs he likes!

It’s worse when you meander over to fuzzier words: “evil”, “consciousness”, “art”, and “love”, for instance. Words like these get to sit on pedestals so high they are literally hidden from view in the clouds. By extension, it’s hard to discern if there really is meaning sitting up on those pedestals at all, as opposed a big foofaraw. And yet, these words get used constantly and–most importantly–they are understood.

Translation: BROCCOLI FOR THE BROCCOLI GOD.

Yeah, sure: people will quarrel over what art “really” is, but at the end of the day, the word exists. It exists in most languages, in fact. Same goes for love, consciousness, and evil. These words are cultural tropes, and they reflect massed perception across generations of human beings. These words, alongside all others, function like any categorical perceptions; they are neural designations that enable an intentional agent to formulate hypotheses about his or her environment. I love, therefore I ____________.

The blank, of course, is where things differ from individual to individual. It represents qualia, or the hypotheses people formulate on the basis of perception. And while there are minute differences from person to person, the fact that the word exists alone indicates that it has anthropological relevance and consistency.

Now we’re hitting the ‘P’ word pretty hard. So what is meant by perception, anyway? To illustrate perception in action, the McGurk Effect serves well. Click that hyperlink and watch the video, would you? Just a slovenly young gentleman saying “Da da, da da, da da” or perhaps “Ga ga, ga ga, ga ga”, right? Now close your eyes and play the video again (these instructions are making me feel like a failed magician, so please be awestruck by the video). Sounds… sheep-like, wouldn’t you say? Perhaps like the stuttered lyrics of The Beach Boys’s “Barbara Ann”? Well, that’s because the audio is “Ba ba, ba ba, ba ba”. Now you can happily watch the reactions of excited Japanese people to the McGurk Effect without spoilers.

This recurring broccoli is almost as invasive as a retrotransposon.

There are two interesting facets to the McGurk Effect:

1) Your visual processing stream influences how you perceive sound.

2) Assuming lack of blindness, deafness, feralness, etc., everyone‘s visual processing streams influence how they perceive the sounds used in the McGurk Effect the same way.

In general, brains are pretty much the same. Yeah, they’re plenty complicated. Yeah, no two brains are identical. But they’re built of the same building blocks, with the same receptors, the same transmitters, and the same layouts. γ-Aminobutyric acid inhibits receiving neurons. Purkinje cells populate the cerebellum. Betz cells are found projecting long axons to local circuit neurons in the spinal cord. The posterior superior temporal sulcus preferentially processes human bodily movements. The medial temporal region of the left hemisphere prefers non-human movement. Heschl’s gyrus activates during processing of semantic information. Unpleasant words activate right amygdala and auditory cortex, while pleasant words activate left frontal pole. And for people familiar with broccoli, there’s probably a very special cluster of neurons in the temporal lobe that devotes itself to firing for broccoli. That’s just how things organize themselves. And yeah, brains are plastic, but the mechanisms for that plasticity are the same across different brains, too.

Goodness, that’s a lot of links.

Anyway, the point: perception exists, and it varies how we describe and think about things, but one can be objective about that subjectivity. After all, perception works pretty much the same way in everyone. There does not have to be a screen in between people who perceive things differently. They’re both perceiving, after all. Sure, you can argue for perceiving perception differently, but then we’d just be stuck in a rut, wouldn’t we?

If you haven't read Le Petit Prince, then SHAME ON YOU.

Extending this notion of universal perceptual mechanics to semantic kerfuffles, we come back to the notion of definition. In computer programming, defining is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1) >>> x=1; y=2; z=3;

2)>>> Wow, turns out it’s easy as just 1, in fact.

3)   File “<stdin>” , line 2

Wow, turns out it’s easy as just 1, in fact.

^

SyntaxError: unexpected token ‘out’

>>>

Easy as a nympho on scopolamine, no? Defining art in code, however, is a completely different ballgame. But that’s kind of the point of art, isn’t it? Questioning the very paradigms that conventionally define it? It’s almost like the word has more value when its definition is just out of reach (of course, that itself can be seen as a definition, but that’s a discussion for a separate blog post). But what about something like consciousness? What does that word mean, seriously?

Like art, consciousness gets regular updates and reinterpretations from those investigating it. Like any firmly established word, it has its cultural roots. Just about everyone has a basic sense of what consciousness is. However, as we learn more about what contributes to conscious experience, it becomes valuable to ask more and more exacting questions, questions that enable the building of an experimental paradigm. Questions like: What neural mechanisms give rise to shifting between conscious and unconscious states? Is linguistic confirmation a valid way to assess consciousness? How do attention and sense modalities contribute to awareness? And these inquiries barely scrape the surface of the leviathan that is the meaning of “consciousness”.

Anyway, the point: think about a chair. Take away fragments of that chair. When does it stop being a chair? Neurally, the answer is, “the object in question ceases to be a chair when the object no longer brings to threshold your neural cluster responsible for responding to objects it has learned to discern as chairs”. After all, there are no chairs out in the “real world”. Chair is simply the word we assign to objects perceived as, well, chairs. Now think about the word “is”. What is “is”? A singular third-person verb indicating equivalence? Really? That’s all you’ve got? Sometimes, you can be surprised by words. Sometimes, it’s fun to reduce things to the absence of meaning. Consider it a thought exercise.

Seriously though, broccoli is fantastic. That is the only absolute truth mankind can ever know.

33 Signs You Might be an Anime Character

1. When you become vindictive or angry, your teeth spontaneously become sharp.

2. During periods of overwhelming emotional arousal, your pupils and irises are overtaken by raging sclera.

3. You have projectile tears.

4. When you sleep, a giant booger bubble emerges from one nostril, serving as a visual indicator of your breathing patterns.

5. When stressed, nervous, or humiliated, you clench your fists about your skirt. If a skirt is unavailable, you ball up your fists regardless. A skirt helps though.

6. From a frontal view, your eyes appear to comprise approximately 50% of your facial area.

7. Your hair is incorrigibly sharp, possibly even useful for making shish kebabs.

8. You have a highly diminished or nonexistent nose.

9. Substantial emotional arousal produces unusual facial discoloration. Sometimes, the color may appear to “fill your face up”, as if filling a teacup.

10. Your mouth is capable of exceeding the bounds of your face.

11. Your hair is naturally an absurd color. Simply absurd. Like lavender.

12. Your life has no meaning unless you are between the ages of 10 and 17.

13. Your reactions to mundane situations are pronouncedly extreme. Untied shoelace? RIP OFF YOUR EYEBROWS AND CALL THE POLICE.

14. Your palm pilot enables you to transform into a superpowered alter ego with a themed outfit.

15. Your legs are about twice as long as the rest of your body.

16. Your legs are about half as long as the rest of your body.

17. You can eat volumes of food exceeding the volume of your body. Obviously your digestive system makes use of Link’s item bag or some such.

18. You are persistently cross-eyed.

19. You wear innumerable bells and whistles. Literally.

20. On the whole, your American voice actor is terrible.

21. When embarrassed or in a tense situation, you can conjure a large tear about your head.

22. Your high school drama causes stars, hearts, or other clichéd images to pop into existence.

23. All of your friends have some martial arts specialty.

24. Upon having an epiphany, you strike a pose.

25. Your cat is a tiny little black fellow who spends his time perched on your shoulder, eyes constantly wide. If he meows, it is a ridiculous sound that no one would ever impute to a cat. It sounds more like a tea kettle wheezing.

26. You constantly verbalize your inconsequential and obvious thoughts.

27. You talk to yourself in front of EVERYONE. Doesn’t matter who it is. You’re going to talk to yourself in front of them. And you’re going to say something stupid.

28. You are furry, striped, have cat ears, and/or a tail. Possibly even paws.

29. You will go to ludicrous lengths to have sex, including riding a bicycle on a telephone wire.

30. Your hair covers your eyes, and yet, you see.

31. There are demons at your school. Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Sometimes you fight them. You know, if you can flip your hair out of your eyes. It’s pretty cool. You’re such a cool guy. But whatever.

32. Your sword is nonsensically large.

33. There are things like ^^this^^ where you come from.

In conclusion, the world of anime is a thermodynamically preposterous place, and it would be most frightening to ever visit it. Thankfully, we can just watch it instead. And, naturally, consider this a cordial invitation to post more signs you may be an anime character in the comments section. O.O

Mating Habits of Gerudos

The reliance of magical universes on… well, magical explanations for incredible phenomena can be dissatisfying. But moreover, it can hinder fun conversational avenues.

Captious and Inquisitive Eccentric: How does that guy turn into a giant pig monster?

Obligatory Correspondent for Illustrative Purposes: Magic.

Eccentric: Oh. So, does he possess genetically-determined traits that enable him to relegate and channel so-called “magical” energies otherwise unavailable to the average person in order to capacitate the metamorphosis, which would be otherwise energetically unfeasible?

Obligatory Correspondent: No, he has the Triforce of Power, which is magical.

Eccentric: Oh. Well, couldn’t we interpret the label “Triforce of Power” as a genetic marker which gave rise to the abilities mentioned before? We can still stipulate that magic exists, but modify its implementation in the universe. Now, instead of being an excuse not to think of an interesting explanation for things, it can be a critical thinking exercise!

Obligatory Correspondent with Waning Patience: No. The Triforce is a magical object. Originally, its Wisdom, Power, and Courage subunits separate when someone with unequal distribution of those characteristics touches it. That person is endowed with the Triforce unit he or she embodies best, and the other two thirds endow their respective paragons elsewhere in the universe.

Eccentric: Ah, so the Triforce is an analytical haptic device that excludes gaseous molecules from evaluations of intent. Presumably it needs to come in contact with a solid system capable of sustaining emergent intentionality and temperament if we are to indulge the inexact “Wisdom, Power, and Courage” paradigm. It must either identify such systems in its vicinity using scanning technology or by taking tissues samples for DNA analysis of genetic disposition for wisdom, power, and courage. However, given that the Triforce exists in a society in which the cannon represents advanced technology, the question arises as to the Triforce’s origins. Who made it?

Increasingly Agitated Obligatory Correspondent: It wasn’t made. After the goddesses Nayru, Din, and Farore made the universe, they merged into the Triforce. It contains their essences.

Eccentric: Hold on a second, we just did a little semantic dimensional leap here. Without going off on a tangent about how vague the word “essence” is, consider the following. In order for the goddesses to exist prior to the universe they created, there has to be an overarching plane of existence that abides their presence, even conceptually. Doesn’t this just all seem like a metaphor for the design team behind The Legend of Zelda? They are creators existing outside of the universe that they create, after all. They even fuse their minds in a manner analogous to the goddesses’ merging. By extension, this makes the Triforce a symbol of the game itself existing inside the game’s universe. It turns out that this is an exercise in conceptual self-reference!

Obligatory Correspondent: NO METAGAMING. IT’S MAGIC.

See? Dissatisfying. Obviously, The Legend of Zelda series takes place in a magical universe. It has magical answers to pertinent questions. But wouldn’t it be fun to establish the rules of that magic using basic reasoning and scientific inquiry? And not in a D&D sense, where quantitative modifiers are assigned to arbitrarily-defined events and traits, but in the all-encompassing sense of something like the Theory of Evolution with regard to biology. Less Wrong‘s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a sirloin example of Übernerd reinterpretation of magically-characterized fiction. There’s no common pragmatism utility to said reinterpretation, but by Merlin’s beard is it fun. And again, a most glowing kowtow to exercises in critical thinking.

So, bearing in mind this overlong exposition, let’s talk about sex, baby. That is: let’s talk about reproduction in the Gerudo race.

Pictured on the left is Nabooru from Ocarina of Time, a prototypical example of a Gerudo: bronze-skinned, golden-eyed, crimson-haired, and leptorrhine. Sure, all the Gerudos look the same because it’s economical to reuse character models in video games, but let’s keep our arguments non-meta for the time being.

The Legend of Zelda mythos strongly suggests an association of the Gerudo race with the Triforce of Power and its affiliated concepts: fire, earth, strength, and so on. For example, Din, the divine essence embodied in the Triforce of Power, is implied to be incarnated in Oracle of Seasons as–you guessed it–the Oracle of Seasons, who happens to look almost identical to a typical Gerudo. Also, Ganondorf, a Gerudo, consistently acquires or possesses the Triforce of Power throughout the games in which he appears.

According to The Legend of Zelda games, Gerudos kick it semi-Amazon style; their race is wholly female with the exception of a single male born once every 100 years. This male becomes king by default. Assuming that “every 100 years” translates more practically to “once an average Gerudo lifespan”, there are several non-deus-ex-machina considerations of the Gerudo’s gender distribution:

Gerudos may reproduce via haplodiploidy or ZW sex-determination means that contains sufficient overlap with the sex-determining factors of other Hyruleans to produce viable offspring. In some of these conditions, we assume that the Gossip Stone from Ocarina of Time that proclaims, “They say that Gerudos sometimes come to Hyrule Castle Town to look for boyfriends” implies interbreeding of Gerudos with male Hyruleans. Continuing logically, we have the following options:

In a haplodiploid situation, female Gerudos are born diploid and males, haploid. In essence, all unfertilized eggs would develop into males. Given that its unlikely that Gerudo females conceive with a partner every time they ovulate, Gerudo populations would contain far more males. Of course, the estrous cycle of Gerudos may not be monthly; if they have exceptionally lengthy ovulation cycles or perhaps only a single release of eggs over the course of their lifetimes, the drive to reproduce prior to and around those ovulation periods will be subsequently enormous. If it is enormous to the extent that every Gerudo in a male-less population acquires a mate to fertilize her eggs with the exception of one, then in that cycle of reproduction, all offspring with will be female with the exception of one, producing the alleged “one male every 100 years”. However, this condition requires that all Gerudos reproduce at approximately the same time. Additionally, there are these considerations:

1. If the females are mating with Hyrulean males to procreate, the likelihood of only a single Gerudo in a generation failing to reproduce are slim. In order to assure this, social hierarchies surrounding mating selection would have to be imposed on the population, and any error would result in more than one male birth per cycle.

2. If the females mate only with the males in their race, very rigid, synchronized reproductive cycles must be assumed. Otherwise, more than one male will be born per “100 years”. And even under strict synchronicity (which could be pheromone-modulated), if the only male in the population dies prior to estrus, scads of males will be born once estrus occurs, again violating the one male per 100 years rule.

It seems that haplodiploidy in Gerudos is problematic all around.

Under a ZW sex-determination scheme, females are heterogametic (ZW) and males are homogametic (ZZ). There are cases of ZW sex-determining animals, like the komodo dragon, producing male offspring in the absence of males. The mechanism responsible for alerting the female komodo dragon’s body of male absence is unclear; it may be the lack of intercourse, but it may also have to do with pheromones. When applying this model to Gerudos, we’re presented with the same problem present in a haplodiploid framework; Gerudo females responding to the same environmental stimuli (like having no coeds around) should respond similarly. That is, they should all produce males.

Hello! I am a komodo dragon! Not only can I grow to be 3 meters long, but in the wild, I can incubate horrifyingly virulent bacterial pathogens in my saliva, which I of course use to kill and eat children. As if that wasn't enough, I even have endogenous venom! Shazam!

As such, it would seem that we must look to situations in nature wherein a single member of a group is born or made biologically suitable for a particular socio-biological role–in this case, producing a male offspring.

The most familiar example of such is queen bees: there’s only one per colony, and she fulfills the task of laying eggs. However, it turns out that many potential queens are born into a colony, and the future queen ends up being she who kills off all competition. Kind of vicious, and definitely not applicable to Gerudos, seeing as they are all female and there are more than one of them. And we certainly won’t be flexing the rules to say that all male Gerudo children, with the exception of one, are cannibalized or something. The rule is that only one is born every 100 years. Not that only one survives or exists within a 100 year period. For all we know, there may be tons of male Gerudos gallivanting about at any given time if their life spans are ludicrously long. However, the Zelda mythos never explicitly addresses this issue. Presumably, the fact that males become king of all Gerudos would preclude such a situation, somehow.

In groups of tropical clown fish, the dominant member is always female. Second in dominance is a fertile male with whom she mates. Other members of the group are protandrous hermaphrodites who will become male if the dominant male dies or if the female dies, in which case the existing dominant male transforms into a female. Basically, the extant social hierarchy determines the expression of sexual traits. Furnished with this knowledge, it suddenly becomes obvious that in Finding Nemo, Marlin should have turned into a female after his wife died. Some neuter clownfish would have then matured into a male and taken his side as a “husband”.

Applying the notion of social dominance influencing sexual reproduction to Gerudos, there exists the possibility that only the dominant female in a Gerudo population can produce male offspring. This could exist in a parthenogenetic (virgin birth) situation as found with ZW species like the komodo dragon; either in the absence of males or according to a 100 year cycle, the dominant female produces a male offspring (whereas the other lack the ability). If the “queen” dies, the next most dominant female in the clan takes up her mantle, a transition that literally transforms her biological capacities as a reproductive organism. This could also work with ZW sexual reproduction; perhaps by mating with Hyrulean males, the dominant female’s selectivity for producing Z gametes only will inevitably result in a homozygous offspring (ZZ)–in a ZW sex-determination system, a male. Nondominant females in the group produce only W gametes and will therefore give birth to heterozygous females. These criteria would not hold for XO sex-determination, however, because males determine the sex under those circumstances.

So, keeping in mind the Gossip Stone’s commentary on sex-seeking Gerudos in Hyrule Castle Town, the most viable explanation of once-every-100-years male birth is the result of a socially modulated (where perceived social status influences biological functionality) ZW ovulatory preferences in dominant versus nondominant females in Gerudo populations. The reproductive cycle of the dominant female is presumably influenced by absolute time, which can be measured by cellular divisions and interpreted by the body, then transmitted to the rest of the population via some communicative means (perhaps chemical). With the exception of the dominant Gerudo, all females mate with Hyruleans and produce female offspring. The dominant female will produce a male at the appropriate time also by mating with Hyruleans. This indicates that many Gerudo phenotypes are dominant (their coloration and facial traits are consistent despite interbreeding with various phenotypes).

In Ocarina of Time, it is claimed that Koume and Kotake are Ganondorf’s “mothers”, so to speak. Perhaps his mother was actually Twinrova, and being a the dominant female in a Gerudo population means also being able to divide yourself into two little old ladies that think they’re twins.

Then again, it’s probably just magic.

Conventional Misconceptions: Infinite Regressions, Computing Power, and Brain Simulations

Some people are skeptical about the possibility of simulating a brain, ever. *cracks knuckles* It’s rebuttal time. And maybe this post is going to strike an aggressive chord, but point-by-point counterarguments are the only good counterarguments.

SO. Let’s roll.

“There’s no reason to think it will ever be possible to scan the human brain and create a functionally equivalent copy in software. Hanson is confused by the ease with which this sort of thing can be done with digital computers. He fails to grasp that the emulation of one computer by another is only possible because digital computers are the products of human designs, and are therefore inherently easier to emulate than natural systems.”

Barely out of the gate and we’re faced with a statement the refutation for which demands proving a negative. There’s no reason to think the brain can be simulated? “Well, prove that it’s impossible,” says the budding but overeager logician. Of course, proving the certainty of an impossibility is impossible (when you’re ignorant of a system’s parameters, that is). The problem with this series of assertions is that there is no evidence offered to substantiate what appears to be a thesis. The claim “brains can never be digitally simulated” at least demands follow-up samples of evidence.

It is obvious from the following lines “Hanson… etc.” that this author intended to critique someone’s reasoning, not supply direct evidence for his topic sentence. There is simply an error in organization occurring here; only after explaining Hanson’s alleged confusion is the time right to continue by making a statement like “brains can’t be emulated on computers”. That way, you can conclude demi-reasonably that brains can’t be simulated because Hanson fails to understand the limitations of computing. After that, you can strengthen your contention against Hanson by adding in citations. Of course, you’re still in the dark in terms of credibility since what some random guy says about whether or not computers can be simulated doesn’t affect whether they actually can be.

Not only is this opening argument feebly constructed; it is presumptuous to boot. Hanson’s belief that brains can someday be simulated virtually isn’t necessarily the product of confusion over the ease of porting. This author is overemphasizing Hanson’s arguable misuse of the verb “port”, when in fact Hanson was probably using it in a general sense to indicate simulation. Hanson may just think the brain is simulate-able in the future because… well, because people have simulated parts of it already. And the level of accuracy to which these simulations resemble real brains can only improve as experimental neuroscience progresses.

But hey, there’s always a chance to redeem the arguments proposed:

“The word “port” doesn’t make any sense in this context because the human brain isn’t software and he’s not proposing to modify it. What [Hanson] means is that we’d emulate the human brain on a digital computer. But that doesn’t really work either. Emulation works because of a peculiar characteristic of digital computers: they were built by a human being based on a top-down specification that explicitly defines which details of their operation are important. The spec says exactly which aspects of the machine must be emulated and which aspects may be safely ignored. This matters because we don’t have anywhere close to enough hardware to model the physical characteristics of digital machines in detail. Rather, emulation involves re-implementing the mathematical model on which the original hardware was based. Because this model is mathematically precise, the original device can be perfectly replicated.”

The first couple declarations in this segment are fairly on point; emulating the brain in a digital framework isn’t quite the same as porting software from one operating system onto another. Hanson probably would be better off just using “emulation” as his go-to descriptor. However, again, Hanson probably means to imply simulation, not emulation. It’s also true that we currently lack the technology to fully simulate computers–that is, including their hardware aspects. But that’s currently. Still no evidence is provided suggesting that such technology won’t exist in the future. And on the other hand, both theory and technology are constantly advancing in a direction that strongly suggests that brain simulation will be within reach someday. Not now, but someday.

Now, let’s address the argument which states that top-down design simplifies emulation. Yes. Yes it does. Why this precludes emulating a brain remains a mystery, however. Certainly, top-down design enables an individual porting software to allocate resources in different ways according to functional goals (you want to make a toaster, there are about three hundred godzillion ways, but they will all toast bread, or toast toast… or something). However, the brain follows rules just like any system. Ever since the Hodgkin and Huxley proposed their model of action potential propagation in 1952, flurries of biologically apt mathematical models have populated the field of theoretical neuroscience. These can all be implemented in virtual environs, the only constraint is processing power. And again, technology is constantly advancing processing power.

Onward!

“You can’t emulate a natural system because natural systems don’t have designers, and therefore weren’t built to conform to any particular mathematical model. Modeling natural systems is much more difficult—indeed, so difficult that we use a different word, “simulation” to describe the process. Creating a simulation of a natural system inherently means means making judgment calls about which aspects of a physical system are the most important. And because there’s no underlying blueprint, these guesses are never perfect: it will always be necessary to leave out some details that affect the behavior of the overall system, which means that simulations are never more than approximately right.”

First of all, nature conforms to mathematical models all the time. What are the fundamental laws of physics if not mathematically expressible parameters with which nature complies? Certainly, much theory derives from flawed experimental and observational data and is thus fated never to be altogether “perfect”, but science self-corrects and therefore approaches reality ad infinitum. And there’s plenty of data that can be excluded from many simulations; probability algorithms for quantum tunneling effects, for instance, aren’t exactly essential components for weather simulations. Same goes for brains. That’s a judgment call that can be made without expectation of significant error.

As mentioned before, processing power comes into play here.  Omissions of variables are often influenced by processing constraints; however, as processors improve, this issue will dwindle.

The “approximately right” phrase used above to connote inadequacy is anything but; for instance, most protein simulations neglect the influences of gravity. And guess what, doing so doesn’t render the results of their walks inadequate. Adding in gravity algorithms would only make the simulation “more real”, not more valuable. Some variables simply are more important to describing the components of a natural phenomenon than others, and this is measurable. If there is no significant loss of accuracy when ignoring a particular set of rules, then those rules don’t need to be implemented algorithmically.

And finally:

“Scientists have been trying to simulate the weather for decades, but the vast improvements in computing power in recent decades have produced only modest improvements in our ability to predict the weather. This is because the natural world is much, much more complex than even our most powerful computers. The same is true of our brains. The brain has approximately 100 billion neurons. If each neuron were some kind of simple mathematical construct (in the sense that transistors can be modeled as logic gates) we could imagine computers powerful enough to simulate the brain within a decade or two. But each neuron is itself a complex biological system. I see no reason to think we’ll ever be able to reduce it to a mathematically tractable model. I have no doubt we’ll learn a lot from running computer simulations of neurons in the coming decades. But I see no reason to think these simulations will ever be accurate (or computationally efficient) enough to serve as the building blocks for full-brain emulation.“

This is pretty cogent, actually. There was some evidence (though no exact statistics, but there aren’t many of those in this post either) provided to suggest that technological advancements don’t contribute dramatically to improvements in simulatory accuracy. Also true is that logic gates cannot sufficiently describe neurons; indeed, they are highly electrochemically dynamic systems coming in myriads of different morphologies, all of which influence their behavior. Those facets of neurons are necessary components to a good simulation. However (the pretentious sibling of “but”), the author still sticks to his guns on the basis of “seeing no reason” not to.

Well, here are a few reasons:

• BrainGate uses microelectrodes to research activational patterns of sensorimotor neurons. These findings are used to develop brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), which enable translation of stimuli into electrical schemes the brain can interpret as well as brain-control of prosthetic apparatuses. With electrical signals alone, these technologies are already good enough to restore functionality to impaired individuals. As the data accumulates, the degree to which functionality is restored will increase.
• The Neurally-Controlled Animat is an organism that effectively exists in a virtual environment. Neural tissues arranged on a multi-electrode array respond to controlled stimuli while all their responses, plastic changes, and so on, are recorded in real time. In this way, we acquire large volumes of information on the dynamics of real individual neurons as well as neuron clusters within a digital framework.
• Hippocampal prostheses are brain implants intended to replace damaged or deteriorating hippocampal tissue. They function using computational models of hippocampal function and have successfully replicated functionality in rats.
• The Blue Brain Project, first of all, is awesome. Second of all, this enterprise has resulted in 10,000 neurons of a rat neocortical column being simulated to biological accuracy (admittedly, that accuracy isn’t specified). Needless to say, the vault of supercomputers behind this is gargantuan. But from the project’s inception in 2002, it only took until 2006 to get the whole column simulated.

When considering the progress and trajectory of current research in neurotechnology, including brain-computer interfaces, neuroprosthetics, hybrots, and computational neuroscience, you must at least acknowledge the possibility that a simulated brain is on the horizon.

Now, while still on topic, this may be a good time to point out a common fallacy attributed to comprehensive brain simulations. Claims flit about here and there proposing that simulation of a whole brain is impossible due to infinite regressions of inventory. If one intends to store data on every neuron in the system, then there will have to be storage accommodations made for the storing mechanisms, and the mechanisms storing that data, and so on. This is simply false; assuming you can simulate a complete brain, it does not contain information about itself that real brains don’t. Brains in reality don’t have a neuron to account for every neuron. That would indeed create an infinite regression, but that’s obviously not how the brain works. If you were simulating a brain, the system in which it operated would store information about all neurons, not the virtual brain itself.

If someone wished to make a really strong argument against the future possibility of brain simulation, the route that must be driven is one of data acquisition. The author of the blog post railed against here touches upon this with his mention of snowball effects. Our models are only as informed as we are, and the brain constantly revolts against being imaged well. Sure, we have fMRI, EEG, ERP, PET, SPECT, and other imaging techniques at our disposal, but the fact of the matter is that the brain’s activities are so dynamic, multitudinous, and difficult to scan that acquiring said data comprehensively and in real-time is pretty daunting. We don’t have the device(s) necessary to accomplish that task yet.

There is another way, however. While genetics is as much an enigma as neuroscience, if it advances more rapidly, simulating ground up genetic translation of the human body in a virtual setting would presumably create a viable, accurate brain. It’s based off the same encoding that our brains are, the trick is to ensure the accuracy of the algorithms denoting genetic activity. Since genetics, as a field, isn’t wrought with quite the same investigative quagmires as neuroscience, computational models may flourish sooner in that arena.