Programming

I found this week's reading extremely interesting. I was left with a lot of questions about what the future holds in terms of artificial intelligence. That said, I have always found it easy to see the comparisons between the physiology and anatomy of our bodies and brains to the structure and functions of computers. Taking anatomy and physiology I and II has really opened my eyes to the complex functions of our bodies and minds and I have found it intriguing that many professors even teach brain and cellular function by making analogies to computer processes. In this day and age, many people are able to make the connection so the analogy works well.

Even just yesterday I remarked to someone that I found the process of memory transfer fascinating. I had a test I was studying for this week and since sleeping helps transfer knowledge from short term memory to long term memory, I was thinking about that upon waking up from a deep sleep after studying the night before. Information I had been shaky with was all of a sudden clear to me after a long night's sleep and after remarking how this was a case for sleep and a case against cramming for tests or pulling all nighters he told me that this is very much like what computers do to write information to long term memory on hard drives. I was struck with yet another computer/brain function analogy that made a lot of sense.

In terms of programming, I strongly feel humans are programmed by society in so many ways and most people live their lives thinking they are making complex decisions based on free will when they are really just doing what they have been programmed to do. We are born and form our first attachment with the caretaker who cares for us in our first year of life. If we are lucky enough to have them care for us throughout childhood, this is our second programmer. The first would be our genes which are in and of themselves code for our personality and what makes us 'tick'.

Our caretakers can begin our programming with simple things, programming us to trust but not trust too much, programming us to eat correctly, tie our shoes, the list is endless really. However, those caretakers were influenced by their environments and by their caretakers and their contacts. Their influences are in the form of religion, their education, their outlook on life shaped by both or by even by other influences like the media. So, those influences shape and color how they then program us and shape our personality. Sure, we can and may grow up and choose to deviate from their programming but that base, the actual programming, can't be disputed.

The media plays a very, very large role in this as well as our caretakers. Growing up watching the television, we are bombarded with images of the perfect family, the perfect job, the perfect life, material items to desire, celebrities to aspire to be like or to hate, views about others that make us feel like we belong to certain groups or differentiate us from others in our quest to try to be different and unique. Many people come out of their childhoods programmed to want to get married, have children and have a house for example. In America, the phrase, 'The American Dream' is thrown around as something to aspire to. They are programmed maybe by their religious influences to feel strongly about different things or people. Maybe they watched many sitcoms and over time they have come to believe that life is only about the pursuit of such things which are found in the sitcoms they grew up 'identifying' with. Yet they never question it. It, the programming, is so ingrained that to them, it just seems like they are making a conscious decision to go for such things. They then program their children in the same way and the process repeats itself over and over again.

We have an entire industry that feeds off this programming, the advertising and marketing industry. It's an industry that goes so far as to even put subliminal messages in commercials just to hook young children into desiring a product that they will then beg their parents for.

What does this say about us as humans? It's lofty to think we are different than computers and to think that we completely act and operate out of nothing but free will but it's not really the case that we act completely out of free will (it's probably a lot less than we may think) and it's no wonder (and in many ways awesome) that we have created computers to mimic the programming process on such a technical level.

We are so easy to program! Even our genetic coding goes so far as to inherently program us in ways that we can't yet get around. Perhaps the more advanced we get the more programmed we become as a species. Maybe our likeness to artificial intelligence is a lot more than we think.