We have solved ninety-nine percent of human race’s problems, and it only took us two generations: One to conceive of the idea and to experiment it with me and another to rear up my intellectual brothers. It wasn’t hard or difficult. They could all have been solved years ago. It didn’t require much technology, or any genuine new ideas. They just needed special attention from very special people: My family.
My name is Joseph, the dream solver and this is how it all began…
My boss came in today, gloating, as if the sun shone from his butt. We all automatically knew this would be one hell of a week. He called for a general meeting, and that meant all were invited, including me. At ten o’clock we gathered at one of the larger rooms in the facility. The assistants, as we were some often called, sat at the farthest end of the large meeting table, making way for all the lab’s major stuff. James, or should I say, Prof. Bigsley, entered dramatically only after all the others were seated. He scanned the room, obviously waiting for everyone’s attention, as he, the great scientist, should have. ‘I had an epiphany,’ he began and quite a few sighs were heard. That meant another crazy experiment to perform. He continued elaborately and explained his thought s and ideas. He probably worked all weekend on it for it was complex yet very well detailed. Diagrams were drawn, graphs were sketched, etc. After almost a two hours lecture, he concluded. Again, that scrutinizing look on his face and a grin appeared, because, today, for the first time, he saw nodded and approval on the faces of his colleagues and employees. That happened for a reason. For the first time, his concepts were actually good. In fact, they were great. Plausible and with interesting prospects at hand. The thoughts that began to cross my mind were interrupted by the sound of applause and I was half surprised to see my hands clapping. The notion surprised even James for he straightened up and looked confused. I could have sworn I could see him blush, but today, he deserved it. The stuff members began to make plans, distribute work among the different sections of the laboratory. Mine got one of the more exciting parts of the experiment, the testing of the apparatus. The idea is pretty simple, but that’s exactly its ingenuity: Our lab works o neural networks and the likes. That’s a system that is designed to work like the human brain and solve problems, but unlike ordinary computers, this system’s special feature is its ability to learn. The system is composed of many subunits, like neurons (brain cells) that are very simple. All they do is get a numerical input, weight it – that means making a very elementary mathematical operation on it – and send the outcome as its output. The uniqueness of the system is that these subunits are interconnected. They are wired to one another and one subunit’s output is another’s input. Thus, the gross unit is composed of an input layer, where the problem to be solved is inserted; and intermediate layer, where numerous subunits are interconnected among themselves and with the input and output layers. The latter gives the solution to the entered problem. The exceptional trait of this entire complex is that is works on the concept of fuzzy logic. This concept introduces the value of ‘probably.’ A normal computer ha s 1’s and 0’s. This system can have ‘probably one,’ that is, if we run a problem we will get about ninety percent 1 and ten percent 0. It sound complicated. Actually, it is. Before I’ll give an example, I must explain its learning capabilities, for James’s idea is related to it. It learns by being able to change the weights, the simple mathematical operations made within each neuron. When these alter the overall operation of the network changes and its final result improves. Let say we want to distinguish between two notes, this means that if we play C major, we want the machine to recognize and tell us it’s a C major, but if it’s a G minor we want it to tell us otherwise. This seems to be an extremely idiotic problem, but there's a catch. Not all C majors are alike. If the instrument we play with is not exactly tuned, we still want the web to tell us correctly what it was supposed to be. To do this, we teach the system how to have a ‘musical ear.’ We play C major at the input layer and ‘tell’ it what note it is at the output layer. Now, the neurons in between have to change their interconnections in the intermediate layer to accommodate the solution. Each neuron adjusts its weight so as to perform the right input-output correlation. Next we play a G minor, ‘tell’ it it’s a different note, and again let it time to properly adjust its weights. We repeat the learning process, but each time with a little change in the input layer; maybe some background noise, different instruments, etc. At the end, if we play an unknown note at the input layer, the interneurons process it with their learnt weights and give the most probable solution. It’s not a hundred percent, but usually close enough.
We’ve done these kinds of machines for many years, using small chips as neurons. The most difficult part is to set the learning process. It uses extremely complicated mathematical formulas and reasoning. That’s why it requires Ph.D. in computer sciences, which I haven’t and probably never will. That’s exactly the reason why I’m going to stay forever an assistant. I just haven’t the brains. Back to the learning processes: James’s idea solved it. He suggested building this neural network on a miniature scale, using very small transistors as the subunits. On that scale, many factors influence the system, which we don’t know of and do not understand, but it doesn’t matter. That’s the enormity of his vision. We don’t care what intricate operation occurs as long as the job is done. We’ll analyze the final result later. The ingenuity of not bothering with the actual process of learning is so typical for James. He always understands where the true importance lies and finds a way to circumvent the more difficult yet insignificant problems. He knows where to focus the proper attention. I really envy him, though it’s a pleasure to work with such a boss. It’s reassuring to know he’s on top of things. At that, the experiment began.
The next year was an exciting one. Many changes happened in my life, scientifically as well as others. A couple of weeks after that consequential meeting I went to a Neuroscience conference. I didn’t want to, but it was necessary for us to ‘expand our horizons.’ Looking back, I’m gratified I did. Rachel was there. The moment I laid my eyes on her, I knew she was the one. She didn’t of course. She attended the conference, as an obligation of her profession, too, but on another note. She was a psychologist. I envied her patients for she was truly beautiful. Her long black hair slid across her shoulders, glistening as a contrast to her gray suit. She looked like a serious ambitious businesswoman at the time, and that intimidated me, but I just had to approach. ‘I hate these boring gatherings, but we just have to be here, don’t we?’ Trying to find some common ground with her. From her stare I realized immediately that was a mistake. ‘I agree. Those hideous lecturers, just going on and on,’ she answered sarcastically. She was probably one of them. ‘Well, not all are hideous and some… Well, they can talk for hours and I’ll still be interested,’ making amends, ‘in the lecture, of course.’ She wasn’t impressed. I introduced myself, as an ice-melter that was thickening by the minute. ‘I’m Dr. Rachel Piers, and I’m on in a few moments, so if you’ll excuse me.’ She abruptly turned and walked away. I frantically searched for a program, found out what hall she lectured in and rushed to it. It was almost full, but I managed to squeeze in. Her lecture was magnificent, although she did talk for hours. She lectured on child psychology and a new bold and innovating theory of hers. As I gathered, it was about teaching children at extremely young age, even as fetuses inside the womb. She somehow made a connection between the senses and the development of the young’s behavioral psychology. Her theory proposed a direct link between sensual stimulation during the first three years of life and a normal pattern of development; emotional and cognitive. She showed experiments done on rodents and mice to support her theory and also primary findings from a special study done on deserted children. Her ideas were invigorating, for she actually proposed a way to actively direct the offspring developmental progress by unorthodox, yet simple, stimulation. Her lecture was fluent and decisive and I would have actually enjoyed it even if she wasn’t the woman of my dreams. She concluded the talk with the determination to fully develop a systematic method to control and improve the psychological state and progress of children throughout the world. The hall was swept by applause, mine the strongest and most enthusiastic. Afterwards I approached her again: ‘You know, some lecturers aren’t that boring’ I smiled. She returned the smile, looking exhausted, yet extremely pleased with her lecture. ‘Did you enjoy it? Well, what do you think of my theory?’ She asked, and I sensed as if she tested me. ‘It’s interesting, though I don’t know how much of it is applicable to the real world’ I tried to impress her again. ‘How will you experiment to check whether your theory holds for humans and not just rodents?’ ‘You know,’ she shrugged, as if I’ve hit the right nerve, ‘that’s actually my biggest problem. You don’t have a baby you can spare, do you?’ Her lips were luscious and her even teeth shone in the light of the room. Was she teasing me? ‘No, I don’t even have a partner to impregnate.’ That didn’t come out right, but I could have sworn I saw a relaxation of her expression. Was she relieved? We continued discussing the matter (Not the impregnating one, but the lack of ‘guinneypig’ babies) and drifted to my work. The conversation went on and on, and before we noticed, it was dark outside. We looked around and noticed we were almost alone. Only technicians and a cleaning lady were present at the conference building. We laughed together and I escorted her to her car. For some unthinkable reason, courage surged through me and I kissed her. Three months later she became my wife.
The experiment continued, divided to several stages. The first one was to design and build the apparatus. I had little to do with that for my electronical knowledge is not comprehensive enough. It took some months to devise the intricate and minute cells that would operate as neurons in the web, but according to James’s direction, little attention was put to perfect the connection between the cells and to remove any defects that occur on the nano-surface. ‘We don’t care if it works with the defects in it or not. Perhaps it will use the defects and impurities to enhance its learning capabilities. I don’t care as long as it learns.’ Our lab was a proper scientific one that produced quite a number of papers a year, so we had to do this experiment by the book, even if it did mean it would take longer. Therefore, we had to test the built system time and time again to see if it functioned properly, before we could even begin teaching it something. It did, so we moved to the next and most important stage – teaching our machine music. It’s a little melodramatic, but actually, its purpose is to acquire some sort of a musical ear. The input of the system was a simple microphone and its output was a single binary code. 1 for C major and 0 for G minor. In between lay a square of interwoven transistors in the waffered semiconductor that, totally, held one hundred neurons. We knew not what each neuron processed but we began teaching it. We took a guitar, a violin, a piano and a synthesizer and played these notes, each time telling the machine what note it was, letting the interconnections adjust to permit such output. Every teaching lesson took several hours and it wasn’t cheap, as all music sessions go. After every lesson we had to test the system again, just for the records. The operation was cumbersome but worth every moment. After two months of rigorous training, came the first test. My department was responsible for that part, so I was extremely nervous when we sat in the lab, instruments all around us. It felt more like a record studio rather than a computer science laboratory. After plugging the trained system to the recording machine we began the test. It was contrived of four sections. First, we played notes the machine had already heard, to check if it had a sort of memory in its digital mind. We were contented and relieved to see it performs well. It hadn’t faltered even one bit. A perfect score for identifying the notes in memory. We moved on to the next phase. We played the same tunes only on different instruments. The objective was to see if it could extrapolate its knowledge to different sounds of the same notes. That bit took longer and the analysis of the output was invigorating. Although it wasn’t a hundred percent, it was statistically very impressive. A ninety seven percent success with new instrument was more than we could have hoped for. James, who attended every day at the lab, which made me extra nervous, was jubilant when we had the final results, though he commented quickly, ‘that was an easy test, not yet implementing its full capabilities.’
The weekend came before we could start the third part of the test, so Rachel and I went to a short vacation in
Although we’ve been married only a couple of months we wanted children, soon. Rachel and I were old, by any standard: I was twenty-eight and she a year younger. Our careers were secure and well paid and we wanted to start a family, each for his own egotistic reasons. Rachel worked with children all the time and studied them all her life. She was fascinated with their reasoning and understanding and was yearning to feel the passion and warmth she saw in other mothers. Children were a huge void in her life and she wanted it badly. I, on the other hand, was just a family man. My work was interesting and rewarding, but I always considered raising a family, the first priority of every man. I could never understand people like James, who disclaimed any need for a partner in life, let alone babbling children who could understand nothing. One of my biggest fantasies was to introduce him to Rachel and see who wins the close match. They were both secure in their intellectual ivory towers and the battle of minds between them should provide some entertainment. We discussed the issue of rearing up toddlers and agreed right away to start making them. We tried for several months and realized, to our great disappointment, something was wrong. We went for a fertility counselor and were examined thoroughly. After more months of agitated waiting the results came. Something was pathological with my sperm count, but we were reassured that the problem can be solved with new technological advancement called in-vitro fertilization. In this delicate maneuver a single sperm was injected into a mature ovum and resulted in a fully functioning fertilized egg. We quickly signed up and continued with the screening and further examinations. These results, to our relief, came out positive and a couple of months later, totally counting two whole years of yearning and eager attempts, Rachel was pregnant. At that time, we already knew the wait was worth it in more ways than one, for those years weren’t all spent on worrying and quarreling, but also on breakthroughs and major cooperation between husband and wife, observer and implementers, laboratory manager and psychologist Ph.D.
The analysis of the system’s operations was thorough and comprehensive. The final paper was published a month later and when I read it something nagged at the back of my brain. The data showed that only thirty-two neurons were used in solving the tone differentiation problem, out of one hundred, and that some of those were connected in a closed circuit, thus not in contact with the input or output layer, yet they did influence the entire system. The other interconnections and processes of the thirty-two neurons were quiet understandable and regularly duplicated. James was awarded for his ingenious ideas and several more laboratories took after his example. I was bothered by something else: Why thirty-two? Why not all one hundred? And then it struck me hard. The task was too simple for a hundred neurons. While everyone else was set to build larger neuron webs with hundreds and even thousands of these cells, I set my mind to continue investigation on the simple web. The idea was so simple and straight forward I didn’t understand how no one else had thought about it. I began forming and designing an experiment to confirm my idea and a week later I went to James. ‘Boss, can I talk with you for a minute?’ I approached humbly. ‘Sure, what’s on your mind? I saw you scribbling a lot this week.’ I was surprised he even remembered who I am, let alone give any attention to my doing. ‘I had an enlightenment following our recent experiment…’ ‘Enlightenment? You’re becoming vain. I like it,’ he grinned approvingly and I continued, ‘I noticed that only a third of the neurons contributed anything to the learning web and it distressed me that such an awful waste of two thirds are not working. Then, I figured that the task was too easy to require all the cells, so I thought why not enhance the difficulty of the task. That’s simple enough, but it occurred to me that there must be a way to maximize the number of cells working and still be able to do the job properly. I remembered reading about a kind of virtual evolution process for computer programs and I sketched an analogue for our web.’ He looked interested as I showed him my drawings. Encouraged, I made my final argument. ‘With evolving, not the system, but the problems needed to be solved, we could find what are the limits of our machine, and perhaps deduce from it the limits of greater machines.’ I gave a crooked smile, anxiously waiting his comments. He slowly reviewed my notes again and after a long wait he reached out his hand. ‘I’m impressed. This idea is spectacular and I’m embarrassed I haven’t thought of it first.’ I took his hand; astonished he grunted me such kind words. ‘I’m, at this moment, appointing you a section of the lab to run your carefully and professionally-thought of experiment. Don’t worry about money, I’ll arrange some kind of grant for you. Pick the men you want and good luck. I’ll expect results in half a year.’ I closed my mouth slowly, for I figured I looked pretty stupid with it open in amazement. I certainly hadn’t expected this, but he did promote me, didn’t he? I had a whole section to run. A manager, not just an assistant. Six months, is he crazy? But I can do it, I know I can! I don’t have to mention, that that period, along with the frustrations with Rachel, was the most frantic of my life, but I did produce results.
After carefully picking up the best men in the facility and an outsider help for programming, I managed to get the virtual evolution going. The process was composed of trying a problem, teaching the system to solve it and then examining the resultant web. With a six-month deadline, I didn’t have the time to be meticulous, so all the tests had to be discarded and each problem and analysis took only a day. After a month of evolution a pattern has emerged and we began a simulation on normal, yet very powerful, computers instead of the time consuming actual training and hardware scrutinizing. After many such simulations and individual tests, we had a problem that was worthy of eighty-seven neurons. With another week to spare I gave the report to James, who was still my boss. ‘What’s this?’ he contemptibly asked. ‘It’s our progress, sir’ I answered, cowardly. ‘Eighty-seven neurons out of a hundred. Are you playing with me? You have a week to improve to ninety-eight or else…’ I left his office, almost crying. Swearing under my breath, I went to my men and told them the verdict. They all began to grumble, but I shushed them. ‘No one’s leaving this room until we have ninety-eight neuron’s worth of a problem, understood?’ They all nodded, for I wasn’t the only one afraid of James’s retaliation. And so the work continued and the deadline was made with a freakish bonus. Somehow, another neuron crept to do his job and the problem required all but one neuron. James entered my section of the lab a day later, holding one of the new magazines. He shoved it in my hand and said ‘You should be proud of yourself. This new and ingenious approached will grant you worldwide recognition. Another team, at MIT, just built a two thousand-neuron web just to solve a problem similar to that you have comprised. Just imagine what you will be able to solve with twenty times your little machine.’ A hurrah was echoed from my men in appreciation of my idea. That was the happiest day of my life. Until then, that is.
Rachel and I always kept account on each other’s careers and developments, and it was on one of those evening conversations that I had made another significant breakthrough. ‘The development of the human brain is amazing’ she said, summarizing some her newly acquired knowledge. ‘Beginning with only one cell, as the whole body does, it multiplies into a layer of cells and twist around itself to become what is known as the neural tube. With chemical factors and mechanical forces as its guides, this tube arches three times to become our preliminary brain. It then slowly develops its unique characteristics, such as the two hemispheres and others. Did you know that it’s one of the first things to develop and continues all through gestation and even after the delivery. A thing that amazed me was that we lose half of our synaptic connections during our first two years of life.’ ‘What?’ I was startled. ‘Say that again, slowly.’ ‘She looked at me, humorous. ‘We lose half of our interneuronic connections during our first two years after we exit the womb.’ I must have looked perplexed, for she stared at me and grinned. ‘Which half, why half?’ Questions were buzzing in my mind like a honeycomb at springtime. ‘Well, according to my theory, and also other well-known facts, we lose those that we do not use. Thus, as I’ve told you so many times before, we can control which of those we lose if we implement specific sensory stimuli at the womb level and during the first few years after birth.’ I indicated with my hand at her for a moment’s silence and gathered my thoughts. ‘What I think of right now is mind boggling, literally. If I put two and two together, we’ll come up with five. At least. Combining your theory on child psychology’s development and my new experiment we don’t only control WHICH connections survive and which disappear. We can, together, think of a way to get a child’s brain to lose no connections AT ALL, to lose no thought capabilities whatsoever. If we continue developing my pattern for more difficult problems to solve with the same amount of neurons, we could extrapolate it to encompass the entire human brain. With your practice we could actually implement the desired problem solving and learning techniques on a new baby. Our baby. We’ll solve your greatest dilemma of trying your original theory and maximize our child’s intelligence to new levels.’ She looked awed. Although it didn’t quite settle in her mind to experiment on her own child, adding that the difficulty we had at just having one, the implications of what I’ve said were unquestionable. That was the goal of every scientist and mother, of every psychologist and a member of the human race: Making and rearing up the most intelligent being on thee face of the Earth.
While waiting for the final results from our consultant, we worked together quietly and discreetly and perfected our combined strategy. Of course, we wouldn’t know it’s perfect until we tried it. When the happy news arrived, we have already constructed a basic laboratory in our nursery at home. All the required instruments were there and the grand experiment began. Every sensory output was implemented including lights, sounds, vibrations and chemicals. Poor Rachel suffered quietly after hours of spending in the horrible looking nursery. I adored her for her patience and determined spirit. Many times after a long hour’s session there, I asked her stop this madness. I knew she hurt, but she declined. ‘This is not only for us, you know’ she said, as if some dipper understanding grew inside her with her baby. ‘This is for posterity and for all the other men and women all around the world. This will be our mark on the world. Let’s make it a constructive and complete one.’
The day Joseph took his first breath was the happiest of my entire life. Unknowingly, it also began a new era for mankind. The sessions at the ‘guinneypig’ room continued even more ferociously and we could barely endure Joseph’s cries as strange tones were sounded to him, as movies and intelligible pictures were shown to him, yet we knew he did not suffer. After and during many of those lessons, Rachel held him in her arms, caressing him lovingly, and I stood there enjoying the restful picture. They both looked as if they glowed from within, radiating a peaceful aura.
After three continuous and inexorable years, we decided the unusual teaching methods will suffice and we stopped those mental and emotional experiments on our only son and began to enjoy the fruits or labor. Joseph was a sharp kid and as a growing child he was nothing short of genius. Because we took notice to every step of his education and development we interfered every time some envious or ignorant person tried to stumble our precious son, though he rarely needed our help as he managed to manipulate and control every situation he encountered. At the age of five we introduced him to the well-connected James and a year later he was introduced to the world.
The rest is written in the pages of history.