Current Topics of Business Policy (E/A/M 21871, IBE 21149) Benito Arruñada Universitat Pompeu Fabra Readings Table of contents 1. Behavior — Due: week 1 2. Contracting — Due: week 2 3. Public sector reform — Due: week 3 4. Other topics — Due: week 4 5. Professional career — Due: TBA 6. E-business — Due: 1st class on e-business 7. Tools — Due: project preparation 1. Behavior — Due: week 1 References: Pinker, Steven (1997), “Standard Equipment,” chapter 1 of How the Mind Works, Norton, New York, 3-58. Stark, Rodney (1996), “Conversion and Christian Growth,” in The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2-27. Pinker, Steven (2002), The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Viking, New York, pp. on stereotypes (201-207). Mullainathan, Sendhil, and Andrei Shleifer (2005), “The Market for News,” American Economic Review, 95(4), 1031-53. Luscombe, Belinda (2013), “Confidence Woman,” Time, March 7. PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 HOW Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published in the USA by W. W. Norton 1997 First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane The Penguin Press 1998 THE MIND Published in Penguin Books 1998 13579 10 8642 Copyright © Stephen Pinker, 1997 WORKS All rights reserved The notices on page 627 constitute an extension of this copyright page The moral right of the author has been asserted Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject Steven Pinker to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser © PENGUIN BOOKS 4 1 HOW THE MIND WORKS But the gap between robots in imagination and in reality is my start- ing point, for it shows the first step we must take in knowing Ourselves: appreciating the fantastically complex design behind feats of mental life 1 we take for granted. The reason there are no humanlike robots is not that the very idea of a mechanical mind is misguided. It is that the engineer- ing problems that we humans solve as we see and walk and plan and STANDARD EQUIPMENT make it through the day are far more challenging than landing on the moon or sequencing the human genome. Nature, once again, has found ingenious solutions that human engineers cannot yet duplicate. When Hamlet says, "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable!" we should direct our awe not at Shakespeare or Mozart or Einstein or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar but at a four-year old carrying out a request to put a toy on a shelf. In a well-designed system, the components are black boxes that per- hy are there so many robots in fiction, but none in real life? I form their functions as if by magic. That is no less true of the mind. The would pay a lot for a robot that could put away the dishes or faculty with which we ponder the world has no ability to peer inside W run simple errands. But I will not have the opportunity in itself or our other faculties to see what makes them tick. That makes us this century, and probably not in the next one either. There are, of course, the victims of an illusion: that our own psychology comes from some robots that weld or spray-paint on assembly lines and that roll through divine force or mysterious essence or almighty principle. In the Jewish laboratory hallways; my question is about the machines that walk, talk, legend of the Golem, a clay figure was animated when it was fed an see, and think, often better than their human masters. Since 1920, when inscription of the name of God. The archetype is echoed in many robot Karel Capek coined the word robot in his play R.U.R., dramatists have stories. The statue of Galatea was brought to life by Venus' answer to freely conjured them up: Speedy, Cutie, and Dave in Isaac Asimov's I, Pygmalion's prayers; Pinocchio was vivified by the Blue Fairy. Modern Robot, Robbie in Forbidden Planet, the flailing canister in Lost in Space, versions of the Golem archetype appear in some of the less fanciful sto- the daleks in Dr. Who, Rosie the Maid in Thejetsons, Nomad in Star Trek, ries of science. All of human psychology is said to be explained by a sin- Hymie in Get Smart, the vacant butlers and bickering haberdashers in gle, omnipotent cause: a large brain, culture, language, socialization, Sleeper, R2D2 and C3PO in Star Wars, the Terminator in The Terminator, learning, complexity, self-organization, neural-network dynamics. Lieutenant Commander Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the I want to convince you that our minds are not animated, by some wisecracking film critics in Mystery Science Theater 3000. godly vapor or single wonder principle. The mind, like the Apollo space- This book is not about robots; it is about the human mind. I will try to craft, is designed to solve many engineering problems, and thus is explain what the mind is, where it came from, and how it lets us see, packed with high-tech systems each contrived to overcome its own think, feel, interact, and pursue higher callings like art, religion, and phi- obstacles. I begin by laying out these problems, which are both design losophy. On the way I will try to throw light on distinctively human specs for a robot and the subject matter of psychology. For I bejlieve that quirks. Why do memories fade? How does makeup change the look of a the discovery by cognitive science and artificial intelligence of the tech- face? Where do ethnic stereotypes come from, and when are they irra- nical challenges overcome by our mundane mental activity is one of the tional? Why do people lose their tempers? What makes children bratty? great revelations of science, an awakening of the imagination colmparable Why do fools fall in love? What makes us laugh? And why do people to learning that the universe is made up of billions of galaxies) or that a believe in ghosts and spirits? drop of pond water teems with microscopic life. 3 Standard Equipment 5 6 | HOW THE MIND WORKS Each number represents the brightness of one of the millions of tiny patches making up the visual field. The smaller numbers come from darker patches, the larger numbers from brighter patches. The numbers THE ROBOT CHALLENGE shown in the array are the actual signals coming from an electronic cam- era trained on a person's hand, though they could just as well be the fir- What does it take to build a robot? Let's put aside superhuman abilities ing rates of some of the nerve fibers coming from the eye to the brain as like calculating planetary orbits and begin with the simple human ones: a person looks at a hand. Vox a robot hrain—or a human brain-—to recog- seeing, walking, grasping, thinking about objects and people, and plan- nize objects and not bump into them, it must crunch these numbers and ning how to act. guess what kinds of objects in the world reflected the iight that gave rise In movies we are often shown a scene from a robot's-eye view, with to them. The problem is humblingly difficult. the help of cinematic conventions like fish-eye distortion or crosshairs. First, a visual system must locate where an object ends and the back- That is fine for us, the audience, who already have functioning eyes and drop begins. But the world is not a coloring book, with black outlines brains. But it is no help to the robot's innards. The robot does not house around solid regions. The world as it is projected into our eyes is a mosaic an audience of little people—homunculi—gazing at the picture and of tiny shaded patches. Perhaps, one could guess, the visual brain looks for telling the robot what they are seeing. If you could see the world through regions where a quilt of large numbers (a brighter region) abuts a quilt of a robot's eyes, it would look not like a movie picture decorated with small numbers (a darker region). You can discern such a boundary in the crosshairs but something like this: square of numbers; it runs diagonally from the top right to the bottom cen- 225 221 216 219 219 214 207 218 219 220 207 155 136 135 ter. Most of the time, unfortunately, you would not have found the edge of 213 206 213 223 208 217 223 221 223 216 195 156 141 130 an object, where it gives way to empty space. The juxtaposition of large and 206 217 210 216 224 223 228 230 234 216 207 157 136 132 small numbers could have come from many distinct arrangements of mat- 211 213 221 223 220 222 237 216 219 220 176 149 137 132 ter.