Religion based conflicts are as old as religions themselves. There is a constant battle between people on which God is stronger, better and of course, real. Reasons why humanity not only justifies its doings by holy messages but promote them too lies in our neurons. Today, we will dive into reasons behind religion-based violence and what our neurons have to do with it. Using computer science for cognitive research is a relatively new field but it is expanding rapidly and helping us to understand the human brain, the most complexed intelligence system there is.
"It's a uniquely exciting time to be working at the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive science, and AI."
-Dr. Nikolaus Kriegeskorte of Columbia University
Cognitive neuroscientists are now using multiple forms of artificial intelligence with neural brain-inspired network models in order to create better diagnostic tools, repair the brain, and ensure it's proper development. Some of the findings along the way are quite interesting. I was all caught up in the news from Pakistan and the majority of the country protesting and demanding the death of one woman so these kinds of research bring hope.
There are AI systems that are able to mimic human religiosity. This opened a doorway into understanding conditions, triggers and patterns for religious violence and can, hopefully, be used to control it. One day that is. The field is young but is already showing great potential and growing exponentially with time. I personally am keen to follow up on its progress and see just how far it would lead and what answers on human behavior it will provide.
Before we continue, we have to make something perfectly clear. Intelligence is a mental quality that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, understand abstract concepts, and adapt to new situations by using knowledge to manipulate our stand in the environment. "To adapt" is the main point here and the best way to simplify what intelligence is would be to say that it is our behavior in new situations.
The artificial neural networks
serve as mini-brains
Both computer modeling and cognitive psychology have systems made of components they are working with. One group has neurons and the other has units of code but they are both determining how much data and in what way is being calculated. "Artificial neurons" are programmed to create neural network models that can recognize a specific place, object or a concept. The machine intelligence programs learn very quickly when given lots of data which enables them to parse contextual learning at a fine level. Those mini-brains are completely transparent and compared to responses given by human neural networks.
Computer vision and biological neurons
Aude Oliva of MIT presented one of her studies at the CNS symposium. She and her colleagues taught an artificial network to recognize 350 different places when presented with more than 10 million images. That network was supposed to recognize rooms like a kitchen or bedroom after learning to associate objects with them. The unexpected part was that network learned to recognize people and animals too and acknowledged parks as parks after seeing animals and rooms as rooms when it saw people. This worked helped neuroscientists to better understand human brains for they too process large amounts of data. When we see a dog in a street, millions of signals emanate from the retina, sweep through a sequence of layers of neurons, and extract semantic information.
"Current neural network models can perform this kind of task using only computations that biological neurons can perform. Moreover, these neural network models can predict to some extent how a neuron deep in the brain will respond to any image."
-Nikolaus Kriegeskorte of Columbia University
You can read the entire press release from CNS 2018 that held place in Boston on March 25, by following this link: Dissecting Artificial Intelligence to Better Understand the Human Brain
I am not delusional. Many of today' conflicts are provoked and people all over the world are being used and manipulated for financial gain of certain interest groups. It is not even a new concept in dividing people, it has been done many times before throughout history when leaders wanted new territory and resources. All they had to do is provoke religious feelings and play the card of God wants us to and is on our side to get people to blindly go into their death. The funny thing is, every religion "promotes" love and peace. Why do they then sanctify weapons? Why is it easier for people to focus on violent messages from holy books than on loving ones?
History of religion
is written in blood
Every religious "holy" book has violence in it. The old testament of Bible could be a plot of a decent horror movie with all the killing, slaves, child marriage and of course, killing of children. This is justified with children carrying the sins of their fathers and not being innocent and do not get me started on male dominance and woman knowing their place. What Christianity has been doing for centuries, Islam is doing now, they just have more technologically advanced weapons than Crusaders did.
Why is it so easy
to manipulate people with religion?
The fact remains that not all people can be manipulated. Not all Muslims are violent just like not all Christians are. Why are some following the message of love while others want to destroy everything that differs from their worldview? The answer, of course, lies in psychology. Exclusive religions show absolutistic beliefs in “one” truth. Fundamentalists have that "one truth" as a motivator of their behavior. They persuade others to join their way of life, defend their views against possible threats and can be violent when their faith is questioned. The reason lies in them identifying with the religion so every critique of that religion is considered as a direct critique of them. Their religion is such a strong part of them that it has become them and the evolutionary need for survival comes in place and is blown out of proportion. They feel honestly threatened with anything different than their religion and are in their way, fighting for their lives. When a religious person is not identifying his entire being with religion but considering it only a part of his life then it is much harder to manipulate that person to perform violent acts in the name of his faith.
A recent study combined computer modeling and cognitive psychology to create an AI system able to mimic human religiosity. This allowed a better understanding of human behavior when it comes to patterns of religious violence. It is one of the first that used psychologically realistic AI and was published in The Journal for Artificial Societies and Social Stimulation.
Is religion causing factors
that lead to religious violence?
The findings of the study revealed that people are generally a nonviolent and peaceful species. However, humans are capable of endorsing violence, especially when others go against the core beliefs which define their identity. Universities behind this research are Oxford, Boston University and the University of Agder, Norway. They hope that findings could help governments to better understand this behavior and possibly control it. The human brain being like a computer programme was up until now considered only an analogy. This team took it a step further and actually programmed realistic AI agents using theories in cognitive psychology to mimic how a human being would naturally think and process information.
"99% of the general public are most familiar with AI that uses machine learning to automate human tasks like - classifying something, such as tweets to be positive or negative etc., but our study uses something called multi-agent AI to create a psychologically realistic model of a human, for example – how do they think, and particularly how do we identify with groups? Why would someone identify as Christian, Jewish or Muslim etc. Essentially how do our personal beliefs align with how a group defines itself?"
-DPhil Justin E. Laned
What this research did is it looked at how humans process information that goes against their own personal experiences. A simulated environment was created with millions of human model agents who had a certain probability that they will interact with natural disasters, disease, and each other. When people's core belief systems have been challenged or they felt like their commitment to their own beliefs was questioned, anxiety and agitations occurred. That anxiety led to violence in 20% of the scenarios created and was triggered by people who were going against the group's core beliefs and identity.
You can read the full research paper by following this link:
A Generative Model of the Mutual Escalation of Anxiety Between Religious Groups by F. LeRon Shults, Ross Gore, Wesley J. Wildman, Christopher Lynch, Justin E. Lane, Monica Toft
Community is a set of individuals. By changing individuals, community changes and it starts with you and me. It starts by questioning our core beliefs and recognizing the patterns in our behavior. Are convictions shaping how we respond to the outside world or are we strong enough to refuse manipulation of our national and religious emotions?
Leaving fingerprints on everything and everyone
Our senses are always receiving outside impulses, translating them and sending signals to our brains that then interpret them. Your every action and your every word have consequences. People around you are looking and listening to you. Lead by example. Everything you do will impact someone or something so consider the cause-effect relationship and think globally. A community is a set of individuals, remember? You are an individual and are in your own small way shaping every community you are a part of. Accept the responsibility for your actions and your thoughts. Now and then, stop for a moment and think about your convictions and are they benefiting everyone. Do not let your emotions be the means you are manipulated with.
