Ordinary Losses, Extraordinary Wins

I have this theory that it was in the best interest of (my) New York Giants to lose during their Week 17 game against the New England Patriots. Had they *won* during that fateful day, they would have launched themselves into the center of the media attention and gone a long way towards making themselves the "team to beat" in the NFC. Having lost that game, they marched into the playoffs as a lowly "underdog" against Tampa Bay, Dallas, and Green Bay and leveraged their superior defense to win games. If they had been the "team to beat", I would argue that these other teams would have spent a little more time and energy to figure out ways to defeat them. But alas, that wasn't the case, and now the Big Blue Wrecking Crew is set to play in another Super Bowl.

I would go so far as to say that they THREW the game. At the half, the Giants led 21-16. Then Burress scored to make the score 28-16. Twelve points is the largest lead held by any team against the Patriots this season. With the foresight that a win wouldn't do them a lick of good, I argue that the Giants strategists made a conscious effort to let up at this point. Between the 9:00 minute mark of the 3rd quarter and the 4:00 minute mark of the 4th quarter Maroney ran for two scores and the Giants let Moss beat them for a 65 yard Touchdown (which set "a couple of records" (which New England fans seem to think are meaningful)). On the other hand, during the span the Giants were flat offensively. One fumbled snap (even though NY recovered) and one interception are evidence that they "weren't trying". Then, in 3:32 with the score at 38-28, the G-men marched down the field 68 yards for their 5th Touchdown of the day. In terms of TDs, the Giants won the game 5-4. In terms of sheer performance, they became the only team during the 2007 campaign to top 30 points against the Patriots.

That being said, the Super Bowl is a week away and I am excited.

And how does this all relate to the theme of "Hedonistic Equanimity"? Well, the Patriots get their "perfect season", so that is hedonistic for them. The Giants increased their chances at making a Super Bowl run by flying under the radar, so that is equanimity. And my overall point, a well-timed lose can frequently lead to much greater things.

Brain RAM

I was either dreaming last night or barely conscience enough to process thoughts, but an idea occurred to me. A theory, if you will. What if thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors could be mapped to identifiable locations in your brain in a similar manner to the way hexadecimal locations map computer instructions and program data.

I mean, I know that science has mapped "regions" of our brain to the function that it served (i.e. (a) the area for the things we see, (b) the area for muscle movement, and (c) the area for creativity). But I bet it is possible to magnify the regions to understand discrete locations of thought.

If you think about it, the brain has different types of memory, just like a computer. On the one hand, there is volatile sensory memory which is quick to disappear as soon as it isn't needed anymore. Then there is short term memory, which is similar to the block of code in RAM that is currently executing or cached data which needs to be accessed quickly (lest its retrieval would serve as a bottleneck to slow down the rest of the system). Finally, long term memory is very similar to RAM that is non-volatile (like a USB Flash memory stick, or any other persistent RAM that is recoverable when power is removed and reapplied).

So, my question is whether it is possible to measure the processing thoughts of a human brain to the level that individual synapses could be assigned physical locations where data values can be observed. If so, I imagine you could then take a "stack dump" to analyze and reverse engineer the language of the brain.

Of course, there is an implication that if you perform discrete "read" operations on a brain, then you could also perform "write" operations. Thus, you could change people's perceptions and behaviors. This could lead to all sorts of things from brainwashing an entire population to benevolently healing a troubled mind.

But, changing perceptions and behaviors twists this discussion into an ethical problem. Would this research be ethical? What is the end goal of any type of brain research? I suppose most people would say that it is medicinal and that understanding in this subject could lead to great things. Similarly, the wrong types of people could do terrible things with the ability to rearrange somebody's brain data (I am reminded of the abilities of Candice or "The Haitian" in the NBC drama Heroes).

To compound things, on a daily basis I pass by the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and their mission statement makes it seem like they are working towards exactly what I am describing (mapping and understanding perception, cognition, and action).

What's up with that?