How Does It Know?

In my line of work, I have found myself asking “How does it know?” a lot. It is generally during a debugging session, and some behavior is occurring and I’m not sure how the program knows to do that, but the program does. And it’s my job to find out what the program knows and it how it knows that.

If you do a Google search of the phrase, you’ll find it’s a common question with today’s electronic gadgets: How does my iPod know what the song titles are? How does my digital camera know what to focus on? How the hell does the game 20Q know what I’m thinking of? How did it get inside my head? With these questions, though, there’s always a logical explanation that someone with the right background and training will be able to understand. Something to do with algorithms, usually.

However, they do say there’s no accounting for taste, and taste is born from the oldest “electronic gadget” around — the human brain. They HAVE been making strides in understanding brain chemistry and the various chemical and electric interactions that occur there, but I think there still is no accounting for taste. Why do I like what I like? What about it resonates with me and clicks in my brain?

I don’t have the explanation and I don’t know if anyone else does either. With music, for example, sure, I could say that I like this singer’s warbly voice, and that I really like the tambourine rhythm during the chorus and the simple yet expressive guitar line at the bridge, but why does that combination of things make sense to me, and not make sense to someone else? Brain, how do you know?

Being a musician who has a good sense of WHAT I like, but not really WHY I like it (”indescribable” is a good word), I strive to make songs that I would like to listen to. I have heard of some artists that write great songs, but then say they wouldn’t normally listen to their own style of music, that they’re into this other thing a whole lot more, but those songs are just what comes out of them. But that’s not really how it works for me. I write songs that I would love had I not written them. And that’s really awesome for me, because in a way, I can create my own entertainment. I like a lot of other stuff too. Perhaps even a lot more than my own music. But still, I feel pretty lucky about that.

The not-so-profound point here is that I strive to make things my brain will enjoy, and hopefully other people’s brains will enjoy them too. But the question “How does it know?” will remain unanswered.