LC Talks - How to Have a Diverse Self

On February 13, I presented “How to Have a Diverse Self,” representing Humanities for the 2020 LC Talks. Since the theme was Delving into Diversity, I decided to speak about what diversity actually is, how diverse the UConn community is, and what science can tell us about cultivating diversity. I actually made the presentation on the day I presented it and did not even rehearse the talk fully. In retrospect, I could have improved my talk by making the technical details more comprehensible and include much more humor and liveliness. Nonetheless, my friends on Facebook enjoyed my talk and I received compliments from the audience. I am convinced that the talk was well received and “diverse.”

As I stated in my talk, I initially hesitated when I saw the poster announcing the 2020 LC Talk theme. I was unsure what I could say that would add to current conversations about diversity, as it is such a common cultural topic. Plus, I am a white middle-class male, which means I am not the prototypical disadvantaged person. However, after some consideration, I decided that I would create a talk describing how cognitive science and physics relate to diversity. I was motivated to do this because the Free Energy Principle (FEP), an integrative theory of the brain and complex systems, ought to be able to explain why diversity matters in the first place. In addition, I thought that if I brought in the FEP for my LC Talk, it would be a great complement to my TEDx Talk “How The Science of Curiosity Can Crush Your Comfort Zone.” My TEDx Talk discussed both Self Determination Theory (a theory of wellbeing and motivation) and the FEP in regard to curiosity and general applications like education and work. Here in my LC Talk, I would use similar ideas to tackle specific problems relating to diversity, including countering discrimination, understanding what a self actually is physically speaking, and how we should properly understand diversity beyond race, age, and other common demographic measures.

Besides my personal motives for applying to LC Talks, my main goals for my audience was to broaden their perspectives about diversity and demonstrate how human problems are physical problems. On the outside, physics seems like an esoteric subject with little application to our daily lives. Physics describes atoms, light, motion, stars, and numerous other topics that appear at first glance to be tangential to our daily relationships, activities, and problems. But in reality, humans are complex adaptive systems, composed of atoms and molecules governed by laws of motion, fluid mechanics, electricity, and the like. Of course, we are all taught the physicalist paradigm in school, but it’s not really taken seriously since discussions of physics are rare in practical matters when they should be front and center. At the same time, physics cannot (yet) explain everything on its own regarding human matters, which is why cognitive science is also essential.

Hailing from Physics and Neuroscience is the Free Energy Principle (FEP). The Free Energy Principle was formulated as a unifying theory of the brain, but has since been extended to living systems in general. According to the FEP, living systems must minimize their free energy in order to maintain homeostasis over time, or else they will inevitably dissipate. Free energy is a mathematical (not inherently physical) concept that represents disorder, entropy, or prediction error. To minimize free energy, living systems must engage in a process called Active Inference. This process involves predicting what will happen next and adaptively responding when there is a prediction error. In doing so, living systems attempt to represent a statistical model of its environment. When there is a discrepancy between what their model predicts and what actually occurs, systems can either update their mental model and/or influence the environment to make it fit their mental model. In other words, living systems must engage in both action and perception. For this reason, minimizing free energy is mathematically equivalent to maximizing self-evidence, or evidence for its own model. To maximize self-evidence, living systems must persist through time and maintain homeostasis.

The significance of the FEP is that it shows what a “self” actually is from a statistical physics perspective and identifies necessary properties that selves have in common. Under the FEP, the self can be identified as a Markov Blanket - a system with a boundary between its internal and external environment that engages in action and perception. The boundary between the inside and outside of living systems is statistical rather than perfectly concrete. This shows that human selves are neither arbitrary nor confined to their own bodies. Instead, there are different levels of organization - “individual” humans are part of their communities, which in turn are a part of their wider culture. A second major gem from the FEP is that everything that we call adaptive really means the ability to model the environment and minimize prediction error through action and perception. This is a gigantic insight because everything that we call a problem boils down to prediction error (i.e. free energy), which can be mathematically measured with tools from thermodynamics and information theory.

Given these insights, we can deduce that diversity (traditionally speaking) is good because it promotes adaptive functioning in groups. Naturally, groups that are composed of people who are too similar (e.g. experts of only the same narrow subject or people of similar personalities) will not be able to act and perceive in response to all of the challenges they face. On the other hand, groups with members who are too diverse would not be able to function well. That is because too much diversity, which here means low specialization, would mean that “self” of the larger collective is incoherent. If there is no cohesion amongst its members and/or lack of specialization, the Markov Blankets (each individual) would not integrate to support the larger group. The FEP thus predicts that creating groups of random people (i.e. diversity for its own sake) is maladaptive. If groups are trying to solve a particular problem, for example, they need to unite around common goals.

With this unifying framework in mind, enigmas like how to solve discrimination and the seeming lack of diversity on college campuses begin to make sense. Starting with the latter, the FEP would predict that if a college is to be adaptive, it needs to be selective in who is admitted. Its selection parameters will be based on what is adaptive for the college. Namely, colleges want intelligent, conscientious individuals. If they accepted just anyone rather than hard-working and open individuals in particular, the college would not be cohesive and many individuals would not be a good match. While colleges make sure to include diversity by demographic, age, or race, they are fine with being “discriminatory” by personality. This is because (even if we don’t want to admit it) only particular people can actually succeed at a rigorous institution such as UConn. Also, having people with particular interests and age characteristics can help promote solidarity. Regarding discrimination, I suggest that we expand our concept of self to accommodate others. This can be done through practices such as meditation and a conscious effort to value everyone. Whereas collectivism can fuel in-group vs outgroup issues where the outgroup is blamed for the in-group’s problems, my concept of “expanded self” fosters conscious inclusion and practices that steadily increase openness. Our concept of self is not concretely confined to one’s body or even one’s close family. We have the power to choose whether or not we identify ourselves with a diverse group of people or only those of a particular type.

You can watch the full event here.