Markov Masks

1100 words, 5 minute read

Who would have thought that this bit of ancient doggerel (John Collins Bossidy, 1910) would prove to be an important anthropological model in the 21^st century? We didn’t…but we probably should have. ‘Art’ often presages developments in science and philosophy. Did Picasso (Cubism) not pave the way for Einstein (Relativity)? Did the introduction of perspective in painting (Renaissance) not pave the way for Machiavelli (Consequentialism) and the so-called Enlightenment (Utilitarianism)?

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Boston 1910’ (above) models a concept (Markov Blanket) that was not discovered and named until 1988 by Judea Pearl; turns out, the Cabots are its paradigm.

The poor Lowells – should they wish to consult the Deity, they can only do so through the Cabots. Like a now largely abandoned model of Church, the Cabots intercede on behalf of the Lowells (or not) and then “justify the ways of God to man” i.e. the Lowells. (Milton)

Likewise, should God have a message for his loyal Lowells, Boston social etiquette requires he filter it through the Cabots. As presented, this arrangement is a bit of a nuisance and it does compromise the Lowells’ privacy, but in fact the ramifications are far more serious.

The Cabots are under no enforceable obligation to pass on the Lowells’ messages in tact or for that matter, to relay God’s responses. They are free to remain mute or, perhaps worse, to distort the God-Lowell messaging any way they wish. The power of the Cabots is awesome, much more so than Bossidy probably imagined.

And it’s not only Brahman Boston that channels interpersonal communication down a narrow necked funnel; it’s all of Western civilization. T.S. Eliot generalized  the concept somewhat more memorably:

“And indeed there will be time…time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.” (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

The human face is the ‘Universal Cabot’; it buffers every interpersonal communication. There is much talk today about Intersubjectivity. The idea goes back to Anaximander, the grandfather of Western philosophy (6^th century BCE) but it is top of mind in the 20^th century philosophies of Martin Buber, Alfred North Whitehead, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Briefly, we become ourselves in the context of the other. We are because they are; we are who we are because they are who they are. It’s nice work if you can get it…but can you? We imagine that we confront each other directly: “Look me in the eyes!” We neglect the fact that our faces, including and perhaps especially the eyes, act as intermediaries: masks, not windows!

Ignoring any question of duplicity, we will assume that I intend to communicate the contents of my mind to you and that I welcome you to share the contents of your mind with me. We habitually neglect the intermediary role played by our faces.

My face is the sort of two way mirror you’re familiar with since your last arrest. Like Narcissus, I project my image onto the interior surface of my face and I see that image reflected back at me. So handsome! A bit long in the tooth perhaps…but so far so good.

Now I expect the exterior surface of my face to project that same image on to you. Here’s where we run into trouble. I want to share with you the deepest recesses of my soul. But that’s not what happens. My face never, or almost never, communicates my image as I intend. It has agency of its own. It reframes my messages before it communicates them…if it communicates them at all.

I have no control over how my face presents me. I can only try to influence it by what I project onto it. I can do no more than propose. I have no idea what is being communicated in my name…or do I? I can’t see my face but I can see yours.

Likewise, I can’t read the messages you would like to send me because your face is also a two way mirror. I cannot see past it into ‘your soul’, but I do see whatever your face shows me. I imagine that I am seeing your face reacting to my message and that I can read that reaction for clues as to the message my face is communicating. I intuit the message I’m sending by reading your face for its reaction. An imperfect science at best! “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” (Cool Hand Luke) No wonder!

From your reaction I may surmise how different your image of me is from my image of myself, i.e. the message I wished to communicate to you. I intended a beatific vision; but from your reaction, I surmise that it was more like a scene from Psycho.

Of course, your experience is the same. I am reminded of St. Paul, “I do not do the good I intend, but the evil I do not intend, that I do.” (Romans 7: 19) 1850 years before Eliot, Paul already understood the alienation that separates the body from the will. Paul’s entire physical self is a Markov Blanket prototype.

Our faces are masks , Markov Masks. They are semi-permeable. I can see your mask through mine as you can see mine through yours, but I cannot see you as you see yourself or as you’d like me to see you; nor can you see me.

The concept of a Markov Mask seems weird. But it shouldn’t. IRL all interpersonal communication takes place through a medium and, per Marshall McLuhan, the medium always distorts the intended message, so much so that we may sometimes say, “The medium is the message.” In that case, perhaps there are no Lowells (and no God?) but only Cabots.

There is much talk today about AI. Our bots are becoming our avatars, our alter-egos. But this technology is not new. It dates back millennia. Evolution’s first agentic bot is the human face…and the human face is a Markov Mask.