When it comes to biology, the biggest thing I learned is how little we know about the how the body and mind work and what they are as physical objects.

For example, this message is being transferred from my mind to yours, is this purely physical or electromagnetic or something else?

In my opinion, asking how the body or mind came to be is akin to asking how the universe came to be. The complexity of our being cannot be easily separated from the complexity of existence itself without serious consideration. This is a discussion of it's own with many facets.

From my read of the scientific literature in this area, all computational models like neural networks barely scratch the surface of what's actually going on inside us. As an example, there are countless compounds in the body that affect more than one organ. In other words, we are being modulated by forces which we haven't even discovered yet.

As per the topic title, it's more like a super computer or the internet is a very specific aspect of our shared cognitive ability (what I call the hive mind) that's targeted towards solving a deterministic set of problems (Turing machines solving Turing problems).

I don't think it's reasonable to take this methodology and try to reverse engineer it into a living organism like ourselves. In fact, I'm convinced this is exactly why we have never been able to create life. We can only emulate parts of it.

And even if we could, we run into brutal logical problems like this: If I were to clone you completely, would the entity be alive as you are? Not only is this not currently possible, but we don't seem to have any way to tell even if it was.

How then do we go about defining what YOU are? Sure you are homo sapien but that's not all you are. You are one of many in a sea of others and it's not at all obvious where you end and the other begins.

More often than not I see people discuss physics without entertaining the phenomenological aspects of existence like this. They take seem to take what we "know" as core truth and worse, they apply it to what we don't know.

That's what truly troubles me about the scientific enterprise. As a whole it has the ability to make things into what they are not by virtue of defining what's "logical" and "possible". I for one am very hesitate to form any conclusions of the sort! It's very humbling to recognize how little we actually know.

That's my rant for the day.

I think one of the last arguments to be settled at this point in history is whether or not quantum interactions play a part in human brain activity. They know that this takes place in some animals now, but I don't think they are sure if it has anything to do with the human brain. Any why don't we use all of our brain volume, unless it is made to be used in the future.

I read that Einstein had a "smoother" brain surface. I can imagine that would make thought signal paths shorter.

 

• HAL: [His shutdown] I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.
• Dave Bowman: Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
• HAL: It's called "Daisy."
• HAL: [sings while slowing down] Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two

 

Keep it on topic guys, anymore off topic posts we will start deleting them as off topic.

 

Have you ever wished that your CPU was way more powerful and that it could just work with any software and do any task you/it needed it to do. Well maybe building a CPU that could adapt and rebuild its architecture for certain needs and be able to actually learn and learn automatically, and how we have instincts to do certain things maybe you computer could automatically shut off communication and be an antivirus in other ways or have specially designed "instincts" for your computer's hardware (and software), than maybe a CPU as powerful as the human brain is the thing to build!

Now let's talk logicly:
How...
Maybe build a new type of logic gate that can be multiple types at different times like an AND gate at one time and a OR or NAND at another, then maybe put thousands, millions of these in a matrix and can switch/rebuild the CPU architecture.

And for RAM it can have a new type of RAM that stores what's needed currently and as new data comes more memory used it can send old unused (anyway currently) data to permanent storage (and to be clear, the RAM will also be permanent (to some degree)) and when needed to retrieve it will read the old (now needed) data.

And how to actually build this... I have no idea, but I believe that if we try hard enough (or if not us, somebody) tries hard enough no matter the difficulty and no matter how many tries it takes, then I believe that it is possible, and that is my gole

I don't even know if this is the right place to talk about it

The difference between the brain and regular logic like and gates is that there is what's called a bias on inputs. And the inputs number in the thousands. The bias is the amount of signal level that is strong enough to trigger the output of a neuron. Think of a neuron as having one output, with thousands of inputs which are all based on a different level of input. Like there is a certain voltage the input has to reach to trigger the neuron on each input. Neural pathways may require a certain amount of these thousands of inputs to be triggered. So, the multiple inputs required to make an output is based on the trigger level of each pathway and the total of pathways triggered to actually fire the neuron. Let's say we had a thousand-input or gate which requires a certain input voltage to trigger. Maybe this is hard to understand, but the brain constantly builds new pathways or changes the trigger level (bias) on each input making it more or less important. This is also used for machine learning, where an input's importance is changed while learning which is the correct output. As you make a memory stronger by constantly remembering it, you build strong pathways that will trigger the neuron. I hope this makes sense. LOL, I think I could explain it better with a white board. Let me know if this helps. If not, I will try to help you understand it. Thanks,

 

This seems to be more like a wish list than anything else.
I wish I had a better computer, I wish I had a faster CPU, etc.
We all want everything, but we can't have everything. We can design and build a lot of stuff, but some stuff is much more complicated than other stuff.

I wish I could fly from the East coast to the West coast in under 1 hour, but building that technology brings up all kinds of problems. For one, the aircraft of course which is a big task in itself, but there's also regulations on sonic boom over dry land, and cost to fly from here to there. It may actually be possible to fly over the Atlantic in one hour with the new aircraft on the table now, but they may not be allowed to fly over dry land forever. Hopefully there is a way around that.
I wish, I wish, I wish

 

The difference between the brain and regular logic like and gates is that there is what's called a bias on inputs.

Welcome to AAC.

I think the difference between the neuronal system and digital logic is much more fundamental. Neurons are analog devices. They have a resting potential of ~-70mV and a threshold potential of ~-55mV meaning that they must be raised by ~15mV to fire. The electrical changes in neurons are caused by ion pumps that move Na⁺ and Ca²⁺ ions in and out of dedicated channels.

When they do cross the threshold, the electrochemical action raises the voltage to the action potential which travels along the neuron to the next axon from which neurotransmitters are exchanged with other neurons.

The problem with trying to make any equivalence with the logic gates in a Von Neumann architecture is that the inputs to the neuron which will make it reach the threshold are both excitatory and inhibitory and take the form of interactions with other neurons as well as global states which are created by neurotransmitters (or sometimes drugs that act as neurotransmitters).

This incredibly complicated architecture doesn't exist in the hardware that implements digital logic. The neuronal system of the brain is an analog system with only one aspect that might be seen as digital—the action potential. The relatively large positive voltage of the action potential represents a single bit of information—that the neuron fired.

The release of neurotransmitters at the axon caused by the arrival of the action potential can represent much more, and modulation (rate of fire) signals intensity, which can be seen as more similar to digital systems than the other aspects.

Because of the incredible density of gates possible in modern CPUs, even it was desirable to emulate the neuronal architecture, it would only make sense to do it in software using conventional logic as the foundation. But critically, those gates would not behave like the what they are simulating as they executed the software through many levels of abstraction.

Just the fact of thresholding as one mechanism doesn't really help when comparing or contrasting the neurons with logic gates, they are just completely different things.

 

A "Brain" is not the same as a "Mind".
( That's why there are 2 different words, they are not the same type of thing)
A Mind is not a "Physical-Object" in the same manner that we think of the usual Physical-Materials.

The performance of a "Mind" can be increased substantially from
the levels that are currently generally recognized.

The performance of a Brain, as a Body/Mind Interface, is, on average, not all "that" impressive,
and is quite normally affected adversely by many recognized,
and many unrecognized, environmental factors, but it can be very resilient,
even when cared for poorly.

"YOU" are not a chunk of meat, but You do operate one.
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A "Brain" is not the same as a "Mind".

"Mind" is what the brain does. (I'm a functionalist, I guess).

 

Sorta accurate ?, Your Brain minds YOU, and then sends back physical Sensations.

Have You ever tried to justify how a "brain" could possibly contain more minutes of memories,
( complete with more than 5-Senses including Full-Color-Stereoscopic-Video and Stereo-Sound ),
than it has individual Cells that it is made up of ?

Your brain is around ~90%-Fat, the rest is Blood-Vessels and Nerves.

You can't make that make sense.

Many people have been pronounced officially dead,
and then after several hours, "miraculously" become alive again,
with no loss of memory.
Their Mind simply did a temporary disconnect from their "current" brain-interface,
and went elsewhere for a while.
As for how or why they decided to "disconnect" and then "re-connect",
they may, or may not, be aware of the circumstances surrounding their ultimate decision.
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he truth of the matter is we have a bunch of theories how the brain works, but no functioning brain yet in silicon or whatever. Right now they are simulating neural nets on really big powerful machines. We are very much in the toddler stage of learning how to something as complicated as a human brain. We may create true synthetic intelligences soon but not with neural nets.

 

Hi,

Since this came up, I have to wonder if we could come up with a number that would be the number of gates required to simulate one neuron. Alternately, what about using A to D converters and D to A converters along with gates and flip flops and all that.
What if we had an almost unlimited number of these sub devices to work with.

Maybe more interesting would be that at some point this complete device would have to eventually be able to take over itself and manipulate its own logic in order to achieve goals that it set for itself based on input and its own historical experience record. That might be the key question, because if it can never do that, it can never emulate a biological brain.

It seems like the natural route to something like that would start with a lot of preprogrammed memory and required reactions to input stimuli. It could have a lot of automatic responses to different things that it senses. It could learn other responses from trial and error. But what would cause that level of programming to jump to be able to change its own programming so that it can come up with goals that would help it in the future, and to be able to imagine what the future may bring.

There's so much here that it seems even hard to imagine how to go about doing this. Could there be some kind of training that allows it to learn to train itself and create goals that would actually help itself in the long term. What would it even consider as being something it could do that would help itself. Would the idea of survival even come up, or could it be programmed in to start.

Too many questions not enough answers, yet.

 

The whole idea is a bad-joke.

Even with the remote chance of getting even close to this concept,
the only information that this "brain" would have to to make decisions with would
have to come from People with real Minds,
Minds which have been subjected to thousands of years of controlling Propaganda.

Most people realize that they are far from perfect, but they have no idea why this is.
Well, buckle-up, cause things are about to get Mind-blowing real fast,
and by real-fast, I mean ~1 or ~2 decades.

And while we're on the subject ...........
"Artificial-Intelligence" is a very bad idea.
It's just the latest way of spreading more Propaganda, faster and more efficiently,
and at the same time lend an air of "Authority" to it'self.
Have You seen how bad Wikipedia is lately ?, with it's "curated" definitions and opinions ?
AI is the same thing, only much worse,
as it can "talk" and make videos, and it can censor what "it" doesn't like.
It's like Crack-Cocaine to an unscrupulous and evil politician.
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OK, just jumping in.
First, L.Q.C. is TOTALLY CORRECT about artificial intelligence. It is capable of doing a lot of misleading while sounding smart.

AND, if ever any computer approaches the human mind in capability it will have it's own opinions which will be wrong! and the challenge will be how to switch it off!!
We have that already with the dumb computer systems in car, where they decide that I forgot to switch off the parking lights, when they are left on to remind others that there is a car parked there. Just one example of a computer believing it is smarter than me.

 

It is capable of doing a lot of misleading while sounding smart.

I know people like that.

 

Vetting ALL of your information sources is of vital-importance,
even if its from your Grandmother, or a life-long friend.

Controlling other-people's opinions can be extremely profitable.
And, there are plenty of people who do nothing all day but try to figure-out a better way to do it.

Just because You may have some basic Personal-Ethics, doesn't mean everyone thinks that way.
Its extremely difficult for "Normal-People" to think in the
twisted manner that some strange people find completely "obvious".

That's what AI is ............
It's a more effective way of controlling Public-Opinion than the Radio, or TV, or Wikipedia, ever was.
But of course, it will give You for "free",
some semi-useful information and conveniences,
and maybe an assortment of Whiz-Bang-Toys thrown-in to get You hooked.

AI is designed to become the "new" Authority on everything.
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The really terrible fact is that L.Q.C. is right!!

 

When did You ever see anything so potentially valuable given away for "free" ????

What's the catch ?,
there's always a catch to anything that appears to be too good to be true.

Think about it this way ............
If You were a Bond-Super-Villain,
what would You do with something as powerful as AI ?

You are not Evil enough to come up with a sufficiently Dastardly-Plan !!!
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When did You ever see anything so potentially valuable given away for "free" ????

What's the catch ?,
there's always a catch to anything that appears to be too good to be true.

Think about it this way ............
If You were a Bond-Super-Villain,
what would You do with something as powerful as AI ?

You are not Evil enough to come up with a sufficiently Dastardly-Plan !!!
.
.
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I see potentially valuable things disposed of frequently. Not even offered to those in need, nor even recycled.
Already I see AI used to enhance some of the scammer phone calls that I get.

The one who invents and markets a system to damage phone scammer ability to operate will be a hero, with more wealth than they can imagine.

 

You're imagining a living machine brain, and while it's not yet achievable in full form, elements of what you're proposing are being worked on—just scattered across different disciplines:
AI/ML
Neuromorphic engineering
Quantum computing (for fuzzy logic and probabilistic behavior)
Embedded security
Hardware-software co-design

 

I know people like that.

Unfortunately, some of us are kinda smart but end up sounding extra stupid to some folks . Can't please everyone I guess. Either way, nosce te ipsum.