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Blink
This morning, I finished reading the book
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by
Malcolm Gladwell,
which I started reading on April 30 and bought on April 19. An interesting book, but somehow it overlaps with the Dutch book
Het slimme onbewuste: denken met gevoel by Ap Dijksterhuis, which I read
in 2014. In one of the last chapters, the book even mentions research done by
Ap Dijksterhuis. I found the discussion on autism and and the ability to read
the facial expression of emotions. It seems that some research is indicating
that people with faceblindness are processing faces with the part of the brain
that normal people use, but with the part for recognizing objects. I realized
that people with faceblindness might also have a problem with recognizing
emotions in facial expressions. I noticed that I had some problems with
recognizing emotions on the Are There Universal Facial Expressions? test, although that once I knew
the correct answer, it became clear to me. I experienced the same when
watching some video's about microexpressions.
Denver DCH-330
Yesterday, I got Denver DCH-330 drone as a present from my employer for having
worked for the company for fifteen years. Today, I came by car to the office
and also brought a monitor and a box that I had taken home from
TkkrLab before the space moved in February.
I left the drone at the space, hoping that someone would have more fun with
than I. To be honest, I am a little afraid to fly the thing. It does have a
camera, but it can only record to a micro-SD card, but someone remarked that
could be fixed. I told people that they should ask permission before
performing some hacking on it.
Book
At 17:44, I bought the book aki akademie voor beeldende kunst
eindexamencatalogus 1994 edited by Bas Könning, Boris Veldhuyzen van
Zanten, Marijke Harmens, and Gerhard van Dragt, written in Dutch and published
by AKI in 1994, ISBN:9073025060, from thrift store Het Goed
for € 2.50.
Robotic Couture
I attended the opening of the exhibition
Robotic Couture at TETEM art space.
I arrived a little after five in the afternoon. It was not very busy. It took
some time before Anouk Wipprecht
held the opening speech, because she had to wait before a young lady was ready
with putting on the robotic cocktail dress. Wipprecht spoke fast with a
mixture of Dutch and English, not so strange, because she has been living
in America for some years. She will stay in Enschede for the Maker Festival
this weekend and give a talk on Saturday. I met several people from
TkkrLab and looked around the
exhibition. I did not consume one of the cocktails being produced by the
cocktail dress.
The Future of Go Summit, Match One: Ke Jie & AlphaGo
I had set my alarm at four in the morning. Shortly after half past four, I
started followeing The Future of Go Summit, Match One: Ke Jie & AlphaGo when the first
two moves had been played. I set my Go board on just left
of the keyboard and copied the moves being played. I shortly followed the
Chinese commentary, but could not make sense of it. It was nice for Haylee to
do the second hour of commentaries. Shortly after six o'clock, LIVE AlphaGo [W] vs. Ke Jie 9p [B], Round 1: Commentary by Myungwan Kim 9p
came on. I followed it a bit, until they started to replay the game from the
start. Around 7:21, Myungwan Kim concluded that Kie Ji is about five points
behind and that the game is coming to a close.
An announcement move
Yesterday, I got up early again, and watched the second Go match between Ke Jie and AlphaGo. Ke Jie played an almost perfect game
for the first hundred moves (according to the winning chance calculations of
AlphaGo). Afterwards Ke Jie told that he was taken over by his emotions in the
second half of the game, after a very complex situation had been created on the
board, what I would describe as total go, where all the stones on the board
where somehow connected and involved in the fight. At some point there were
eight unsettled groups, which is an unheard of high number. Ke Jie, quit
suddenly it seemed, resigned at the start of the end game. He must have
concluded that his position was hopeless.
Today, I did not get up early, and when I opened the live channel, it was at
the start of the end game between AlphaGo and five Chinese professional
players. I did not follow the game in great detail. But suddenly, I heard the
two female commentators calling a move of AlphaGo "an announcement move". When,
I noticed that AlphaGo had played an empty triangle move, a had to laugh out loud. All beginners are being
told that the empty triangle is a very bad shape and that if they could simple
avoid playing it, they would immediately jump in strength. It is a move with
which AlphaGo says: I am so sure of my victory and I just play a very stupid
move to let you know. About three minutes later, the team of Chinese
professionals, resigned. Of course, AlphaGo did not play this move with the
suggested intention. Actually, it is not able to internally verbalize such
reasoning, let alone do it on purpose. AlphaGo is trained to maximize its
chance of winning, not to win with the largest possible margin, which means
that if it is ahead with more than the smallest possible margin for winning, it
starts to play moves to reduce the margin if those moves according to many
Monte Carlo playouts give a higher win chance. When we humans, who are not
able to perform all those thousands of playouts, have to learn a game like go,
we do this by verbalizing all kinds of rule of thump. Some are simple and
others are had to grasp. We find enjoyment in grasping the rules, in getting a
deep grasp of the game. This immediatly shows the big difference between
deep learning networks like the one used in AlphaGo and our minds. In our
brains there are neural networks with similar or even more powerful
capabilities, but they mostly implement unconscious data processing. We can
pick a familiar face out of a crowd in a blink of a second, sometimes we even
have to search with our eyes to find the face to affirm it was indeed someone
we know. We play games like go primarily with the more higher, more conscious
parts of our brain.
Rob Scholte
I went to the lunch interview/discussion with Rob Scholte about his work on the How on earth should this be art
exhibition at Concordia in Enschede. There
were also some young ladies who were studying to be art teachers, who raised
some interesting questions. Afterwards, I shortly talked with Rob Scholte and
discovered that he knows Peter Struycken as
well.
Bookshops in Utrecht
From the railway station, I walked through the streets Voor Clarenburg and
Mariastraat to bookshop De Wijze Kater. I just paid a short visit and only
looked at some singing bowls. Next I went to bookshop Steven Sterk and spend some time looking around. At last, I visited Broese Boekverkopers. There again, I only looked around.
This months interesting links
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