Self-discovery

by Vladimir Savchenko

  “Well, at least an unfair spanking won’t knock us off the track. We’re at the wrong age.”

  “I’ll drink to that!”

  They announced the train. We went out to the platform. He went on talking.

  “You know what’s interesting? What happens to that old saw about people being born with a destiny? Let’s say that it was intended at your birth for you to move through space and time at a certain rate, to advance at work, etc. And suddenly — abracadabra! — there are two Krivosheins! And they lead separate lives in separate cities. Now what happens to the divine plan? Or did God write it in two variants? And what if we turn into ten? And what if we don’t want to, and don’t?” We both made believe that something ordinary was happening. “Friends, check to see that you haven’t kept the departing passengers’ tickets by mistake!” I hadn’t. The train took him to Moscow.

  We agreed to write to each other when necessary (I’ll bet that he won’t feel that necessity very soon!) and to meet next July. We’ll spend this year approaching the problem from two angles; he’ll take biology, and I’ll take systemology. We’ll see….

  When the train left I realized that I would miss him. I guess because this was the first time that I had felt as comfortable with another person as I do with… with myself. There’s no other way of putting it. Even between Lena and me there is always something left unsaid, misunderstood, strictly personal. But with him… but even with him, we each developed our own secrets over a month of living together. Interesting, that bustling mother life!

  I was high on cognac, and coming back from the station I stared at people and at life. Women with concerned, anxious faces entering stores. Guys riding on motorcycles with girls on the back seat. Lines forming by the newspaper kiosks, waiting for the evening papers. Human faces, how different they all are, how understandable and mysterious! I can’t explain how it happens, but I seem to know about a lot of them. The corners of the mouth, harsh or fine wrinkles, the bearing of the head, and the eyes — especially the eyes! — they are all signs of preverbal information. Probably from the days when we were apes.

  Just recently I did not notice such things. I did not notice, for instance, that people waiting in line were ugly. The banality and meaninglessness of such an occupation, the worry that they will run out, that someone will sneak in ahead of them, leaves an ugly imprint on the face. And drunks are ugly, and brawlers are ugly.

  But take a look at a young girl, laughing at a joke made by the boy she loves. Or at a mother, nursing a child. At a master craftsman doing fine work. At a good man thinking about something. They are beautiful, despite pimples, wrinkles, and lines.

  I could never appreciate beauty in animals. As far as I’m concerned only man is beautiful — and then only when he is human.

  A toddler stared at me as though I were a miracle, tripped and fell, insulted by earth’s pull. His mother, naturally, added to his pain. The little guy suffered for nothing. What kind of marvel am I? Just a man getting fat, with a round back, and a common face.

  But maybe the little fellow was right: I’m really a miracle? And every person is a miracle?

  What do we know about people? What do I know about myself? In the problem called life, people are a given that does not have to be proved. And everyone who uses that given comes up with his own theory. Take my double, for instance. He left and that was both unexpected and logical.

  But wait! If I’m going to get into this, I should start at the beginning.

  It’s funny to remember. Actually, I began with the simplest of intentions. To do my dissertation.

  But creating something secondhand and compilatory (sort of like the topic recommended to me by my former chief professor Voltampernov, “Several Peculiarities in Projecting Diode Memory Systems”) was boring and repulsive. I was human after all. I wanted an unsolved problem, to get into its soul and to investigate nature with the help of reason, machines, and apparatus. And to discover something that no one had ever known. Or to invent something that no one else ever had thought of. And to be asked questions at the defense that would be fun to answer. And then to be told by friends, “Well, you really let them have it! Terrific!”

  All the more because I can do that. It’s not something you announce to people, but I can say it in my diary: I can. Five inventions and two completed research projects are proof of that. And this discovery… ah, no, Krivoshein, don’t be in a rush to add this to your intellectual laurels. You’re mixed up by this and still can’t get it straightened out.

  In a word, my heart’s desire is what led me into the thick of that tendency of world systemology where the fundamental operative function is not the formula, or the algorithm, not even the recipe, but mere chance.

  We, with our limited minds, love to make juxtapositions: lyric poets and physicists, waves and particles, plants and animals, machines and people…. But in life and in nature these things are not juxtaposed; they complement each other. Just as logic and chance complement each other in comprehension and solution finding. You can find much of the unproved, the capricious, in mathematical and logical constructions and you can find logical laws at work in random events.

  For example, the ideological enemy of random retrieval, Voltampernov, doctor of technological sciences, never missed a chance to parry my suggestion (to study modeling of random processes) with the quip: “But that will be modeling with, so to speak, coffee grounds!” Isn’t this the best illustration of that complementary nature?

  And it was hard to argue. There was little achieved in this field, and many projects ended unsuccessfully, and ideas… ideas didn’t have enough effect. In our department, like in the Wild West, they believed only in bare facts.

  I was thinking of following the example of Valery Ivanov, my friend and former head of the lab, and to call it quits with the institute and move on to another city. But — and here it was, the random chance! — the builders did not complete the new building for perfectly good reasons, and the money allotted in the institute’s budget was not spent for good reason, and Arkady Arkadievich announced a “contest” to find the best way to spend eighty thousand rubles. I’m sure that the most virulent defender of determinism would have to be careful not to make a mistake here.

  I had formed my idea by then to research what a computer would do if it was fed not by a program that had been reduced to a binary system, but with ordinary — meaningful and random — information. Just that. Because when it is programmed it works with an amazing brilliance that stuns reporters. (“A new breakthrough in science: a machine can plan a shop’s work in three minutes!” — because the programmers in their modesty usually fail to mention the number of months they prepared for that three — minute decision.)

  Naturally, my idea done in an elementary way was nothing more than delirium for any intelligent systemologist: the computer would not behave in any way at all; it would simply stop! But I wasn’t planning on doing it the elementary way.

  To spend eighty thousand rubles to equip a lab in the five weeks left in a fiscal year, even a lab that was as flexible as one for pure research, was no snap. It’s no wonder that the equipment genius of the institute, Alter Abramovich, still shakes hands respectfully whenever we meet. Actually, he didn’t realize that an idea coupled with a burning desire to move into the operative expanses can work wonders.

  So, this was the situation: there was money and nothing else. Five thousand to the builders for the best lodge possible. (They tried all kinds of manipulation, like “Dear man! we’ll fulfill the plan and even win a prize, you’ll see!”) Thirteen thousand for a TsVM — 12 computer. Another nine thousand for all kinds of sensors and receivers: piezoelectric microphones, flexible strain gauges, germanium phototransistors, gas analyzers, thermistors, an apparatus for calculating the electromagnetic biopotentials of the brain using the SES — 1 system with four thousand microelectrodes, pulsometers, semiconducting moisture analyzers, and photoelemental “reading” arrays. basically, everything that turns sou
nds, images, smells, small pressures, temperatures, weather changes, and even spiritual impulses into electrical impulses. With four thousand I bought various reagents, laboratory glassware, chemical equipment — in case I ever wanted to employ chemotronics, about which I had heard a little. (And if I’m going to be completely honest, because it was easy to buy this stuff by requisition. I don’t have to mention the fact that I didn’t use any of the eighty thousand for personal effects.)

  All this was fine, but the core of the experiment was still missing. I knew what I wanted: a commutator that could switch and combine random signals from the sensors in order to send them to a “reasoning” computer — a piece of an electronic brain with a free circuit of connections of several thousand switching cells. You can’t get something like that even by written order — it doesn’t exist. Buy the parts that make up the usual computers (diodes, triodes, resistors, condensers, etc.) and order one? It would take too long, and was completely unrealistic. I would have to supply a detailed blueprint for something like that, but what I wanted couldn’t have a blueprint. It was really a case of not knowing where I would go or what I would find. And once more my friend chance gave me my “I don’t know what” and Lena…. Wait. Here I’m not willing to put it all down to chance. Meeting Lena was a gift of fate, pure and simple. But as for the crystal unit… if you think about something day and night, you’ll always come up with it, find or notice it.

  Here was the situation: three weeks left ‘til the end of the year; fifty thousand rubles still unused; no hopes of finding the commutator; and I’m riding a bus.

  “They bought fifty thousand rubles worth of solid — state circuits and then they found out they don’t fit!” a woman in a brown fur coat was exclaiming in front of me to her neighbor. “That’s disgusting!” “Madness,” she agreed.

  “Now Pshembakov is trying to blame everything on the supply department. But he ordered them himself!” “Just think of the gall!”

  The words “fifty thousand” and “solid — state circuits” had gotten my attention. “Excuse me, but what kind of circuits?”

  The woman turned to me, her face so beautiful and stern that I was sorry I had interrupted.

  “ ‘Not — ors’ and flip — flops!” she answered hotly.

  “What parameters?”

  “Low — voltage — excuse me, but why are you butting into our conversation?”

  And that’s how I met Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, an engineer from the nearby construction design bureau. The following day, engineer Kolomiets wrote a pass for executive engineer Krivoshein to visit her department. “Savior! Benefactor!” cried the head of the department, Zhalbek Balbekovich Pshembakov, when engineer Kolomiets introduced me and explained that I could buy up the bureau’s damned solid — state circuits. But I agreed to benefact and save Zhalbek Balbekovich only on the following conditions: (a) all 38,000 cells would be mounted on panels in accordance with a rough sketch I gave him; (b) the cells would be connected by feed bars; (c) each cell would be wired and; (d) all this would be done by the end of the year.

  “You have great production forces here. It won’t be difficult for you.”

  “For the same money? But the cells themselves cost fifty thousand!”

  “Yes, but they didn’t fit the FTD. Keep that in mind.”

  “You’re a scourge, not a benefactor,” said Zhalbek Balbekovich, sadly waving his hand. “Fill out the order, Elena Ivanovna. We’ll send it in from our department. And I’m putting this whole thing in your hands.”

  May Allah bless your name, Zhalbek Balbekovich!

  To this very day, I think that I won Lena’s heart not with my great qualities, but because — when the cells had been mounted on the panels and the edges of the microelectrical cube looked like fields of colorful wires — I answered her tremulous question “And how should they be connected?” with a devil — may — care:

  “However you like! Blue to red — and make sure it’s aesthetically pleasing!”

  Women respect the irrational.

  And that’s how it all happened. Chance does make itself felt. (Oh, now it’s beginning to seem that during the course of my work I’ve developed a worshipful attitude toward chance! The fanaticism of a convert…. Before, to tell the truth, I was a real sluggard, preaching humility and resignation in the face of “unlucky” events. If you think about it, such feelings always mask our spiritual laziness and complacency. Now I was beginning to understand an important aspect of chance, whether in life or science: you won’t conquer it with reason alone. Working with chance demands quick thinking, initiative, and a readiness to change your plans… but it’s just as stupid to worship it as it is to deride it. Chance is neither enemy nor friend, neither God nor devil. Whether chance is mastered or lost depends on the person. And those who believe in luck and fate can go out and buy lottery rickets!)

  “But the name laboratory of Random Research’ is too odious,” said Arkady Arkadievich, signing the order to establish an unstructured lab, directed by engineer Krivoshein, with the concomitant material, fire safety, and other responsibilities. “You shouldn’t give people straight lines. Let’s call it something more restrained, like ‘New Systems Laboratory. And then we’ll see.”

  That meant that doing my dissertation remained my major problem. Beyond that, it was “we’ll see.” I have yet to solve the problem.

  Chapter 7

  If an identification computer, or perceptron, signals “garbage” in response to a picture of an elephant, to the depiction of a camel, and to the portrait of a major scientist, this does not necessarily mean that it is irreparable. It may just be philosophically inclined

  K. Prutkov — engineer, Thought 30

  Naturally, I had hoped, for my spirits, that the work would be livelier. How could I not dream, when the mastermind of cybernetics, Walter Ross Ashby, doctor of neurophysiology, kept coming up with ideas, each more entrancing than the next! Random processes as the source of the development and ruin of any system, strengthening the thinking capabilities of humans and machines by distinguishing the valuable thoughts from the nonsense in random expression…. and finally, noise as the raw material for extracting information — yes, yes, the “white noise,” that troublemaker on which I lost more than one year and more than one idea trying to drive it out of circuitry!

  In general, if you think about it, the founder of this tendency has to be considered not Dr. Ashby, but the now — forgotten director of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, who (in order to create ominous rumblings in the crowd scenes of Boris Godunov) first ordered each extra to repeat his home address and phone number. But Ashby has posited solving the reverse problem. We take noise — the surf, the hiss of coal dust in a mike, anything — and plug it into a machine. From the noise chaos we extract the largest “splashes.” This gives us a pattern of impulses. And impulse patterns are binary numbers. And binary figures can be changed into decimal ones. And decimals are numbers: for example, the numbers assigned to words in a dictionary for machine translation. And a collection of words is a sentence. Of course, for now, the sentences are varied: false, real, abracadabra — informational raw material. But the next cascade will have two streams of information — the kind that is intelligible to people, and this raw material. Then operations of comparison, coincidence, and noncoincidence — and everything nonsensical is filtered out, as is the banal. Then original new thoughts, discoveries and inventions, the works of unborn poets and writers, philosophical thoughts from the future appear! A thinking computer!

  Of course, the respected doctor did not explain how to perform this miracle. His idea is embodied only in squares connected by arrows on a piece of paper. In general, the question of how to do it is not highly esteemed in academic circles. “If you remove yourself from the difficulties of technical realization, then in principle you will be able to imagine….” But how can I remove myself from it?

  Well, enough whining! That’s why I’m an experimenter, in order to test ideas. That’
s why I have a lab. The walls give off the smell of fresh oil paint. The air conditioner hums. New instruments shine on the equipment shelves. Vessels and jars with reagents sparkle in the cupboards, and colorful piles of wires and soldering irons, their points still red and uncovered with scale, wait for me. Apparatus, neatly wrapped in plastic, sit on the counters — and their pointers aren’t bent yet and their scales aren’t dusty yet. Dictionaries, textbooks, reference books, and monographs are arranged on the bookshelves. And in the middle of the room, glistening in the January sun, stands the TsVM — 12, the automatic digital printer, with lacy, multicolored wires in the crystal unit. Everything is new, unsullied, unscratched, and everything exudes the wise, rational beauty developed by generations of craftsmen and engineers.

  How could I not dream? And what if I succeeded? Actually, for myself, my dreams were much more modest: not of a supercomputer that would be smarter than man (in general, I’m not crazy about that idea, even though lama systems technologist), but of a computer that would understand man, the better to do its work. Then that idea seemed possible to me. Indeed, if a computer can exhibit definite behavior based on everything that I tell and show it, and so on, then the problem is solved. That means that it has begun seeing, hearing, and smelling through its sensors in the purely human sense of these words, without quotation marks or explanations. And then its behavior could be adapted for any work or problem — that’s why it’s a universal computer.