Quantum Random Walks and MOOCs

If Reality is an emergent property of the zone of engagement between the Knower and the Real, then what does that say about education in general and educational practices such as MOOCs in particular?

I think I should draw out some of the implications of this arrangement: a zone of engagement between the Knower and the Real. Most of the Real is hidden from us, both because it is beyond the horizons of possible engagement and because there is more Real than we can engage even within those horizons. Still, there is plenty of Real that we can know (we won't run out), and we are ever extending our horizons through technologies that allow us to engage more and more. So there's lots to learn, even if we can never learn it all. That's extremely good news, I think. A fine gospel for educators. Our vocations, if not our jobs, are secure.

That's our status in terms of the Real, but what about Reality, or the stuff that we can engage and can know, the stuff that "resists our experiences, representations, descriptions, images, or mathematical formulations" (Manifesto, 20)? Do we know all of that? This seems to me a tricky question. The first glib answer is that, of course, we don't know all of Reality, but I immediately want to counter that while I or you alone don't know all of Reality, maybe we do. Is it useful to define Reality as the sum total of what humans know and have known? I think so, and I think it points us to a most useful feature of MOOCs.

It seems to me that MOOCs, especially of the Connectivist variety, help us to approach the question of what we know rather than what I know. This is an important question because it undermines traditional education and its strict grading economy: 1 student = 1 grade, no cheating.

As electronically networked entities, MOOCs function similarly to quantum walks, a concept I first heard about in MIT quantum computing engineer Seth Lloyd's talk on Quantum Life, or how organisms have evolved to make use of quantum effects. At one point (11:50), Lloyd asks how photosynthesis can be so efficient (about 99%) when a photon that strikes a leaf must go through a maze of molecules to find the central photosynthesis processing unit. Apparently the photon engages in some very special kind of quantum multi-tasking, or quantum superposition, called a quantum algorithm. I don't have the science and mathematical knowledge to go into the details, and as Lloyd notes himself, even quantum scientists find superposition counter-intuitive, but basically the photon is able to explore all pathways at once, quickly locating the correct path to bliss.

For me, a better, more manageable, image of quantum walks is how bees search for a new hive. The bees start from the hive and then search all paths (approximately) at once, bringing back reports about each path, which is subsequently processed by the hive. This is what MOOCs can do, and this is what makes them so powerful, at least for me. Like bees searching for a new hive, MOOCers can begin in the middle with a given curriculum, but then they fan outward making a thousand different connections at once before bringing that new information back to the MOOC. Rather than exploring the single path of a single instructor, a functioning Connectivist MOOC explores nearly all paths at once, making connections to more knowledge, more contexts, than any single instructor, even a really bright and gifted instructor, can make. In other words, like bees in a hive, MOOCs use a process something like a quantum random walk to search all paths (approximately) at once, aggregate that knowledge with something like GRSShopper, and thereby create actionable knowledge available to the entire MOOC.

I like this image. For me, it captures some of the best of what happens within a successful Connectivist MOOC. This is good stuff.

Reality as a Zone of Engagement

So I've distinguished the Real from Reality and accepted that most of the Real is hidden, probably forever and not just from me but from my entire species, both because we physically cannot encounter it all and because, even if we could, we can't hold it all. Hmm … perhaps. This last point troubles me. I accept that I cannot hold it all, but what about we? Can we hold it all? Perhaps not, but we can certainly hold much more knowledge than I alone, and that may be sufficient for whatever tasks our species encounters. This is a thought that I will keep. Hold that thought.

At any rate, I now have the Real, Reality, and Knowledge. If I understand Nicolescu, Reality is the zone of engagement between the Real and the knower. Nicolescu describes this zone in, for me, rather interesting terms:

By "Reality" (with a capital R) we intend first of all to designate that which resists our experiences, representations, descriptions, images, or mathematical formulations.

Reality, then, is first that zone within the Real that in some way resists my pushes outward. Reality is the stuff I can bump into, the stuff that I can draw or sculpt or construct, the stuff that I can describe in words or mathematical formulations. Reality is the stuff that sends back a signal when I ping it. Group knowledge, I suppose then, is that zone within the Real that pushes back in similar enough ways when any of a group of us ping it.

I'm immediately troubled by my knowledge of those things—say, the Greek gods or Yoda—that I can push against and describe, but that I don't want to admit into the realm of Reality—and certainly not the Real—but let's not think about that for the moment. What I like about this description of Reality is the dynamic process of engagement between the Real and the knower, or between ontology and epistemology. Reality, I think, is first an emergent property of the interaction between my push outward and whatever pushes back. Of course, sometimes the Real pushes in first and I push back in response. In other words, reality as a zone of engagement is a reciprocal process, but the key is the dynamic interaction, the zone of engagement, out of which Reality emerges.

And here is the key for me in answering my original question: does epistemology take second seat to ontology? Perhaps it should; however, the moment-to-moment emergence of Reality within the interactions of the Real and the Knower seems to depend as much on the Knower (epistemology) as on the Real (ontology). I'm quite certain that Reality—the stuff that I know of the Real—depends as much, if not more, on my engagement with the Real and the processes by which I make sense of that engagement. In his wonderful book The Master and his Emissary (2012), psychiatrist and literary scholar (cool) Iain McGilchrist explores the two realities created by our divided brains, and he is quite explicit about the role we play in creating Reality:

In fact I believe there is something that exists apart from ourselves, but that we play a vital part in bringing it into being. A central theme of this book is the importance of our disposition towards the world and one another, as being fundamental in grounding what it is that we come to have a relationship with, rather than the other way round. The kind of attention we pay actually alters the world: we are, literally, partners in creation.

When I connect McGilchrist's book to Zull's book about the neuroscience of learning, it seems highly likely that my and our Reality depends as much on my/our neurological apparatuses and processes as it does on the ontological features of the Real.

However, I think, too, that the Real as well as Reality is changed by engaging with the Knower. If I understand my readings in quantum physics correctly, then many physicists accept that engaging the Real changes all parties of the engagement, the Knower/s as well as the Real itself. This seems counter-intuitive in day-to-day life. For instance, most of us assume that our car remains the same thing ontologically whether we are looking at it or not and regardless of the angle from which we look at it, but quantum physics seems to suggest that this is not so. While fine quantum weirdnesses are often flattened out in the coarse structures and processes of everyday life, this is not always so. In his Big Ideas talk The World as a Hologram (2011), quantum physicist Leonard Susskind tells the story of two friends Alice and Bob and what they both experience when Alice falls into a black hole. From Alice's point of view, nothing happens as she crosses the point of no return where she can no longer resist the inexorable pull of the black hole. However, from Bob's point of view, Alice is incinerated in a flash of unbelievable heat and disappears forever. In one reality, then, Alice is fine, but in the other reality, Alice is dead. At the same time. This makes no sense, but here's a serious, world-famous scientist insisting that it is the case.

So I don't think that epistemology quite plays second fiddle to ontology. I am increasingly coming to believe that the interactions across the zone of engagement between me and the Real not only change me, but they also change the Real. Engagement changes all parties to the engagement, and the Realities that emerge from that engagement depend very much on the relative positions of the engaged parties.

So what does this have to do with MOOCs and quantum random walks? Much it would seem.