K
krw
Guest
On 7 Jul 2015 11:50:19 GMT, Jasen Betts <jasen@xnet.co.nz> wrote:
If you can't read, I can't help you understand your error.
If you can't read, I can't help you understand your error.
P
Phil Hobbs
Guest
On 07/07/2015 02:30 AM, Clifford Heath wrote:
Expound.
A tautology would be "thought is impossible, therefore no thought can be
taking place." This argument is a positive one, just a bit too
conclusive for the comfort of mechanists (of whom I used to be one).
Claiming what exists? You're the one making the metaphysical claims
here, Cliff. You seem to think that your metaphysics is somehow
privileged, exempt from elementary philosophical investigation. Yet you
have no problems putting words in my mouth and attributing all sorts of
views to me that I'm not advancing.
I'm not arguing for ghosts in machines, or the nonexistence of matter,
or anything else of the kind. I'm merely claiming to demonstrate that
your position is too simple, in that it is self contradictory.
Aristotle knew that, and he's nobody's idea of a fundy. Kant knew it
too. So did every thinking person until about 1955ish, when the fashion
for computers and their programs seems to have made everybody forget how
to add and subtract.
and I'm just pointing out the psychological motivations for
I said nothing of the sort. I just said that the mind wasn't merely
software. I don't know what it is, but it logically cannot be merely an
epiphenomenon of the brain.
I doubt you could defend that statement.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
Expound.
A tautology would be "thought is impossible, therefore no thought can be
taking place." This argument is a positive one, just a bit too
conclusive for the comfort of mechanists (of whom I used to be one).
Claiming what exists? You're the one making the metaphysical claims
here, Cliff. You seem to think that your metaphysics is somehow
privileged, exempt from elementary philosophical investigation. Yet you
have no problems putting words in my mouth and attributing all sorts of
views to me that I'm not advancing.
I'm not arguing for ghosts in machines, or the nonexistence of matter,
or anything else of the kind. I'm merely claiming to demonstrate that
your position is too simple, in that it is self contradictory.
Aristotle knew that, and he's nobody's idea of a fundy. Kant knew it
too. So did every thinking person until about 1955ish, when the fashion
for computers and their programs seems to have made everybody forget how
to add and subtract.
and I'm just pointing out the psychological motivations for
I said nothing of the sort. I just said that the mind wasn't merely
software. I don't know what it is, but it logically cannot be merely an
epiphenomenon of the brain.
I doubt you could defend that statement.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
F
Frank Miles
Guest
On Wed, 08 Jul 2015 08:55:32 -0700, John Larkin wrote:
[snip]
I work every day with neurophysiologists who are trying to understand how
memory, decision-making, visual recognition, and other amazing "ordinary"
brain activities occur. I have yet to hear of any talk of quantum mechanics
being necessary for any of these.
Looking at single neurons or small sets of neurons (and perhaps glia), there's
been no need to drag quantum mechanics into analytical descriptions of cell
behavior. Moderately complicated computational tasks involving sensory and
motor tasks are moderately well understood relatively near the periphery based
on these models.
We certainly can't categorically exclude quantum mechanical effects in brain
activity at this point, but there is no need to include it, either. Such a
suggestion adds a certain fanciful noise to the discussion without really
helping to understand or predict anything.
[snip]
I work every day with neurophysiologists who are trying to understand how
memory, decision-making, visual recognition, and other amazing "ordinary"
brain activities occur. I have yet to hear of any talk of quantum mechanics
being necessary for any of these.
Looking at single neurons or small sets of neurons (and perhaps glia), there's
been no need to drag quantum mechanics into analytical descriptions of cell
behavior. Moderately complicated computational tasks involving sensory and
motor tasks are moderately well understood relatively near the periphery based
on these models.
We certainly can't categorically exclude quantum mechanical effects in brain
activity at this point, but there is no need to include it, either. Such a
suggestion adds a certain fanciful noise to the discussion without really
helping to understand or predict anything.
M
Martin Brown
Guest
On 07/07/2015 15:21, Phil Hobbs wrote:
I think you will have to elaborate on why you think that a simple
mechanistic materialism logically entails the consequence that logical
thought cannot exist. Our individual reasoning may be flawed but there
is always peer review to find errors in any mathematical proofs.
What we perceive as consciousness and thought is likely to be an
emergent behaviour on a sufficiently large network of interconnected
simple computing nodes. It looks complex from the outside but the
individual elements are nothing more than a pattern of clicks on neurons.
We are not all that far off being able to build dedicated hardware with
comparable complexity to the human brain now so it will soon be a viable
experiment. Though a cat brain seems to be first choice.
In much the same way as the simple rules for Conway's life by sheer luck
happen to produce a computationally complete Turing machine.
Not a program as we would understand it, but a pattern of interconnects
and signals that represent things we have learnt in a physical medium.
I don't see any compelling reason to invoke magic of any kind.
When we can do the full computer simulations on suitable hardware then
it will be possible to decide this question by experiments.
--
Regards,
Martin Brown
I think you will have to elaborate on why you think that a simple
mechanistic materialism logically entails the consequence that logical
thought cannot exist. Our individual reasoning may be flawed but there
is always peer review to find errors in any mathematical proofs.
What we perceive as consciousness and thought is likely to be an
emergent behaviour on a sufficiently large network of interconnected
simple computing nodes. It looks complex from the outside but the
individual elements are nothing more than a pattern of clicks on neurons.
We are not all that far off being able to build dedicated hardware with
comparable complexity to the human brain now so it will soon be a viable
experiment. Though a cat brain seems to be first choice.
In much the same way as the simple rules for Conway's life by sheer luck
happen to produce a computationally complete Turing machine.
Not a program as we would understand it, but a pattern of interconnects
and signals that represent things we have learnt in a physical medium.
I don't see any compelling reason to invoke magic of any kind.
When we can do the full computer simulations on suitable hardware then
it will be possible to decide this question by experiments.
--
Regards,
Martin Brown
M
Martin Brown
Guest
On 07/07/2015 00:19, John Larkin wrote:
At the moment because we humans can use pattern matching tricks and
parallelism that are beyond our ability to program into robots.
The robots are getting better though. I have seen a few now that can do
tricky variable jobs that previously only humans could manage. Sorting
Smarties (M&Ms) from a tray being one of the more impressive examples.
It is likely that the computational singularity exists somewhere in the
future of computer hardware. When I was an undergraduate the idea that a
computer could beat me at chess was risible. Now any one of a dozen
chess engines is stronger than our best human world chess champion.
David Levy only just won his bet. Turns out though that computer chess
was a false dawn and is an easier problem than we first thought.
Go requires much deeper pattern matching skills to play at any kind of
serious competitive level and computers are way behind human masters.
More impressive still are the self driving cars which are just into road
trials now. Even with some bugs they may be safer than humans.
The madman's brain *is* almost as good as Einstein's assuming that the
madman can see, walk and run. It takes insane processing power to handle
the visual inputs from the eyes and run a 3D world model.
The amount of the brain dedicated to abstract thought, reasoning and
imagination is tiny by comparison.
It is only silly if you choose not to understand it.
New age weirdo thinking. Presently advocated by Penrose in his various
popular science books. I remain unconvinced. The crux of the complexity
of a human brain is a huge number of tiny simple computing elements and
the insanely large number of permutations of possible interconnects.
--
Regards,
Martin Brown
At the moment because we humans can use pattern matching tricks and
parallelism that are beyond our ability to program into robots.
The robots are getting better though. I have seen a few now that can do
tricky variable jobs that previously only humans could manage. Sorting
Smarties (M&Ms) from a tray being one of the more impressive examples.
It is likely that the computational singularity exists somewhere in the
future of computer hardware. When I was an undergraduate the idea that a
computer could beat me at chess was risible. Now any one of a dozen
chess engines is stronger than our best human world chess champion.
David Levy only just won his bet. Turns out though that computer chess
was a false dawn and is an easier problem than we first thought.
Go requires much deeper pattern matching skills to play at any kind of
serious competitive level and computers are way behind human masters.
More impressive still are the self driving cars which are just into road
trials now. Even with some bugs they may be safer than humans.
The madman's brain *is* almost as good as Einstein's assuming that the
madman can see, walk and run. It takes insane processing power to handle
the visual inputs from the eyes and run a 3D world model.
The amount of the brain dedicated to abstract thought, reasoning and
imagination is tiny by comparison.
It is only silly if you choose not to understand it.
New age weirdo thinking. Presently advocated by Penrose in his various
popular science books. I remain unconvinced. The crux of the complexity
of a human brain is a huge number of tiny simple computing elements and
the insanely large number of permutations of possible interconnects.
--
Regards,
Martin Brown
J
John Larkin
Guest
On Wed, 08 Jul 2015 15:19:39 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
A few things like highway collision avoidance, maybe warnings and
applied braking, might be good. I can't imagine a self-driving car
being feasible in a dense city.
Single-cell and few-cell brainless critters do impressive things, like
hunting and hiding and defending themselves and finding mates. Why
would neurons be limited to acting like slow majority logic gates,
dumber than a bacteria? The Neural Network model is popular because
people don't understand how cells actually work; it's cargo cult
science. What might the image recognition processing time be for a
trillion element neural net computer with millisecond element prop
delay? It wouldn't win many tennis matches.
Why wouldn't neurons use quantum computing principles inside? If it's
possible, evolution would have taken advantage of it. So you are
saying that it's not merely a weird idea, but it's impossible. Pretty
strong statement.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
A few things like highway collision avoidance, maybe warnings and
applied braking, might be good. I can't imagine a self-driving car
being feasible in a dense city.
Single-cell and few-cell brainless critters do impressive things, like
hunting and hiding and defending themselves and finding mates. Why
would neurons be limited to acting like slow majority logic gates,
dumber than a bacteria? The Neural Network model is popular because
people don't understand how cells actually work; it's cargo cult
science. What might the image recognition processing time be for a
trillion element neural net computer with millisecond element prop
delay? It wouldn't win many tennis matches.
Why wouldn't neurons use quantum computing principles inside? If it's
possible, evolution would have taken advantage of it. So you are
saying that it's not merely a weird idea, but it's impossible. Pretty
strong statement.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
C
Clifford Heath
Guest
On 09/07/15 07:43, John Larkin wrote:
And yet we have done both those things already with hearing, and the
operation to implant the bionic ear is approaching routine. The bionic
eye project is active and will succeed within a decade. Will you then
move the goalposts again, to defend your magical thinking?
Occam's razor. There's no need to consider it, because nothing appears
to be going on that actually needs it. Contrary to your assertion,
no-one claimed it was impossible that quantum effects play a part. Just
that it seems unnecessary (so far).
Neural nets - the kind you refer to - are not remotely structured on the
actual neural structure as it's currently understood. In particular,
they do not have temporal feedback (whereas all cognitive thinking
occurs in a mess of massively-interconnected *oscillators*). They also
lack the hierarchical layering and reinforcement structure of the neural
cortex. They are constructed in modules whose learning time grows
exponentially with size, so are completely unworkable at scale.
All these things have been fixed in the HTM research I referred to. The
breakthrough demonstrations occurred around 2010, and have grown since
then, and as I said, it as recently adopted by IBM's Cortical Learning
Center. They would not be committing resources to wafer-scale
fabrication without some pretty compelling demonstrations.
But hey, why not just continue spouting old criticisms of some earlier
technology instead of doing some reading. That's much easier, right?
Clifford Heath, CTO, Infinuendo.
And yet we have done both those things already with hearing, and the
operation to implant the bionic ear is approaching routine. The bionic
eye project is active and will succeed within a decade. Will you then
move the goalposts again, to defend your magical thinking?
Occam's razor. There's no need to consider it, because nothing appears
to be going on that actually needs it. Contrary to your assertion,
no-one claimed it was impossible that quantum effects play a part. Just
that it seems unnecessary (so far).
Neural nets - the kind you refer to - are not remotely structured on the
actual neural structure as it's currently understood. In particular,
they do not have temporal feedback (whereas all cognitive thinking
occurs in a mess of massively-interconnected *oscillators*). They also
lack the hierarchical layering and reinforcement structure of the neural
cortex. They are constructed in modules whose learning time grows
exponentially with size, so are completely unworkable at scale.
All these things have been fixed in the HTM research I referred to. The
breakthrough demonstrations occurred around 2010, and have grown since
then, and as I said, it as recently adopted by IBM's Cortical Learning
Center. They would not be committing resources to wafer-scale
fabrication without some pretty compelling demonstrations.
But hey, why not just continue spouting old criticisms of some earlier
technology instead of doing some reading. That's much easier, right?
Clifford Heath, CTO, Infinuendo.
C
Clifford Heath
Guest
On 09/07/15 07:17, Bill Sloman wrote:
Paul Davies is a proponent of this magical thinking too. It's all an
unnecessary attempt to salvage free will (and hence, significance, and
the ancestral spirit world) from the machine.
David Pennington (who's no slouch himself; studied under Dirac,
worl-class mathematician and also an Anglican priest!) unwittingly
showed me why that salvage attempt is unnecessary, and put the clincher
on my personal non-theism.
He said, more or less:
"Consider the molecules of air in this room, which collide elastically
(like billiard balls, except for the shape), such that in a tenth of a
nanosecond each molecule will experience an average of 50 collisions.
How much do we need to know about a molecule and its environment
in order to be able to predict its direction and momentum after those
50 collisions?
The astounding answer is that if you omit from your calculations the
gravitational attraction (the weakest of the known physical forces) of
a single electron (the smallest known stable particle) at the opposite
end of the universe (the most distant known location), then after 50
collisions, a tenth of a nanosecond, you know *nothing*, you cannot
predict *at all*, the direction or momentum of that molecule."
In other words, without even invoking any quantum effects, everything in
the universe is inextricably linked to everything else. Just because
there is some non-local causation happening is no reason to disclaim
personal responsibility, or to regard your actions as non-free. They're
just free in a different context, and that's all that matters.
Clifford Heath, CTO, Infinuendo.
Paul Davies is a proponent of this magical thinking too. It's all an
unnecessary attempt to salvage free will (and hence, significance, and
the ancestral spirit world) from the machine.
David Pennington (who's no slouch himself; studied under Dirac,
worl-class mathematician and also an Anglican priest!) unwittingly
showed me why that salvage attempt is unnecessary, and put the clincher
on my personal non-theism.
He said, more or less:
"Consider the molecules of air in this room, which collide elastically
(like billiard balls, except for the shape), such that in a tenth of a
nanosecond each molecule will experience an average of 50 collisions.
How much do we need to know about a molecule and its environment
in order to be able to predict its direction and momentum after those
50 collisions?
The astounding answer is that if you omit from your calculations the
gravitational attraction (the weakest of the known physical forces) of
a single electron (the smallest known stable particle) at the opposite
end of the universe (the most distant known location), then after 50
collisions, a tenth of a nanosecond, you know *nothing*, you cannot
predict *at all*, the direction or momentum of that molecule."
In other words, without even invoking any quantum effects, everything in
the universe is inextricably linked to everything else. Just because
there is some non-local causation happening is no reason to disclaim
personal responsibility, or to regard your actions as non-free. They're
just free in a different context, and that's all that matters.
Clifford Heath, CTO, Infinuendo.
C
Clifford Heath
Guest
On 08/07/15 04:51, Phil Hobbs wrote:
Your argument is barely any better. You're firstly defining thought as
something which cannot exist within a machine, and then showing that it
cannot exist within a machine. Well duh.
The idea you attacked in your first post on this subject is that
"'modern science' has proven that the human mind is just the pure
physical operation of the human brain under physical causation and
nothing else."
So either you're attacking the "physical operation... under causation"
or you're saying that the brain is linked to something more than itself.
Furthermore, you're saying that Aristotle proved your point. You say
"there would be no way to even notice that the next step went wrong",
but there *is*: the real experiential world allows us to discount
flights of fancy and determine which things are real.
Claiming that thought exists, and requires something outside the machine
that's "not just software".
Your demonstration of self-contradiction was a failure.
Kant himself departed from Plato and aligned himself with Hume in
claiming that thought alone (without empirical observation) cannot lead
to truth.
Even if we believe that the brain is somehow linked to the rest of the
universe in a cosmic consciousness (via quantum gravity or any other
kind of woo), and that therefore the entire universe is a "thinking
machine", your argument would still claim that it cannot think. To make
that argument requires redefining thought as "that which cannot exist
inside a machine". That's just folly and sophistry.
Clifford Heath.
Your argument is barely any better. You're firstly defining thought as
something which cannot exist within a machine, and then showing that it
cannot exist within a machine. Well duh.
The idea you attacked in your first post on this subject is that
"'modern science' has proven that the human mind is just the pure
physical operation of the human brain under physical causation and
nothing else."
So either you're attacking the "physical operation... under causation"
or you're saying that the brain is linked to something more than itself.
Furthermore, you're saying that Aristotle proved your point. You say
"there would be no way to even notice that the next step went wrong",
but there *is*: the real experiential world allows us to discount
flights of fancy and determine which things are real.
Claiming that thought exists, and requires something outside the machine
that's "not just software".
Your demonstration of self-contradiction was a failure.
Kant himself departed from Plato and aligned himself with Hume in
claiming that thought alone (without empirical observation) cannot lead
to truth.
Even if we believe that the brain is somehow linked to the rest of the
universe in a cosmic consciousness (via quantum gravity or any other
kind of woo), and that therefore the entire universe is a "thinking
machine", your argument would still claim that it cannot think. To make
that argument requires redefining thought as "that which cannot exist
inside a machine". That's just folly and sophistry.
Clifford Heath.
B
Bill Sloman
Guest
On Tuesday, July 7, 2015 at 1:19:17 AM UTC+2, John Larkin wrote:
Penrose made much the same claim in "The Emperor's New Mind"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind
Nobody took him seriously, and he's got a rather better track record than you have.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
On Mon, 06 Jul 2015 19:07:12 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:
On 7/6/2015 6:52 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 12:17:19 -0400, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:
On 7/4/2015 12:10 PM, rickman wrote:
On 7/4/2015 11:42 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 7/4/2015 9:32 AM, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:
Moore's law never made any claims about speed. It was specifically
about the number density of transistors on a given area of silicon.
I roll my eyes when I hear "Moore's law" and the "computing power of a
chip"
in the same sentence. He stated his law when a chip had 4 transistors.
Since you can't make a computer with 4, it makes no sense to speak of
the
computing power of a chip.
What we need is a breakthrough in 3D structures. In 2D we're limited
to a
few connections per transistor, and a few per gate. It's
connections-per-element that will make HAL possible.
There are all kinds of 3D structures. The problem is cooling them. For
instance, say you're stacking a processor and several planes of memory.
The processor generates a lot of heat, so it has to go next to the
heat sink, i.e. at the top of the stack. but then all its I/O has to go
through the memory chips, so you lose all your area to through-silicon
vias (TSVs). Same problem as very tall buildings.
Aren't the human brain and body 3-D structures? I wonder how they can
do what they do?
You should have studied biology.
If you put it the other way up, you have to throttle back the CPU to the
point that you don't gain anything. Computer speed has been a tradeoff
between clock rate and cooling since the 1980s. I remember going to a
talk by a system architect in about 1988, where he put up a plot of
delay vs. power consumption per gate. It dropped steeply at first, of
course but then gradually rose again at high powers, because the chips
had to be spaced out in order to cool them, which added time-of-flight
delay.
That assumes a constant in process technology which we all know advances
steadily at least if not at the same exponential rates it has been
achieving.
No, it doesn't. There are fundamental physical limits involved, like
the size of atoms and the conductivity of pure copper. Just the random
variations in the local density of dopant atoms causes huge
threshold-voltage shifts. Process improvements can help lots of things,
but you can't make smaller atoms.
And the brain hardly has the same speed-of-light limits as fast silicon.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
A human, with a wet-chemistry brain, using millisecond logic gates,
can whup a teraflop-CPU robot at tennis.
The whole singularity thing is a red herring. It's a symptom of the
decline of thinking in our age that most folks assume without proof that
'modern science' has proven that the human mind is just the pure
physical operation of the human brain under physical causation and
nothing else.
That argument isn't modern at all, and in fact was debunked quite
conclusively about 400 BC. We can't think without our brains, but we
don't altogether think *with* them. If pure physical causation (what
Aristotle called 'efficient causation') is all that's going on when our
brains change from one state to the next, there's no room for *logical*
causation at all. A madman's brain is just as good as Einstein's, on
that view, and if (per impossibile) the state of a brain happened to
correspond to one step of a logical argument, there would be no way to
even notice that the next step went wrong, let alone correct it.
This was a philosophical commonplace up until our culture lost its mind,
sometime around 1955.
NB this has nothing to do with any particular religion--Plato and
Aristotle knew all about it.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
The model of a brain as a bunch of threshold logic gates (the Neural
Network approach) is silly. Prop delay alone makes the idea absurd.
Single-celled critters can do pretty cool adaptive stuff.
The brain must be quantum mechanical at the cellular level, with all
the mysticism and noncausal behavior of quantum mechanics.
Penrose made much the same claim in "The Emperor's New Mind"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind
Nobody took him seriously, and he's got a rather better track record than you have.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
B
Bill Sloman
Guest
On Tuesday, July 7, 2015 at 1:19:17 AM UTC+2, John Larkin wrote:
Penrose made much the same claim in "The Emperor's New Mind"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind
Nobody took him seriously, and he's got a rather better track record than you have.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
On Mon, 06 Jul 2015 19:07:12 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:
On 7/6/2015 6:52 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 12:17:19 -0400, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:
On 7/4/2015 12:10 PM, rickman wrote:
On 7/4/2015 11:42 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 7/4/2015 9:32 AM, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:
Moore's law never made any claims about speed. It was specifically
about the number density of transistors on a given area of silicon.
I roll my eyes when I hear "Moore's law" and the "computing power of a
chip"
in the same sentence. He stated his law when a chip had 4 transistors.
Since you can't make a computer with 4, it makes no sense to speak of
the
computing power of a chip.
What we need is a breakthrough in 3D structures. In 2D we're limited
to a
few connections per transistor, and a few per gate. It's
connections-per-element that will make HAL possible.
There are all kinds of 3D structures. The problem is cooling them. For
instance, say you're stacking a processor and several planes of memory.
The processor generates a lot of heat, so it has to go next to the
heat sink, i.e. at the top of the stack. but then all its I/O has to go
through the memory chips, so you lose all your area to through-silicon
vias (TSVs). Same problem as very tall buildings.
Aren't the human brain and body 3-D structures? I wonder how they can
do what they do?
You should have studied biology.
If you put it the other way up, you have to throttle back the CPU to the
point that you don't gain anything. Computer speed has been a tradeoff
between clock rate and cooling since the 1980s. I remember going to a
talk by a system architect in about 1988, where he put up a plot of
delay vs. power consumption per gate. It dropped steeply at first, of
course but then gradually rose again at high powers, because the chips
had to be spaced out in order to cool them, which added time-of-flight
delay.
That assumes a constant in process technology which we all know advances
steadily at least if not at the same exponential rates it has been
achieving.
No, it doesn't. There are fundamental physical limits involved, like
the size of atoms and the conductivity of pure copper. Just the random
variations in the local density of dopant atoms causes huge
threshold-voltage shifts. Process improvements can help lots of things,
but you can't make smaller atoms.
And the brain hardly has the same speed-of-light limits as fast silicon.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
A human, with a wet-chemistry brain, using millisecond logic gates,
can whup a teraflop-CPU robot at tennis.
The whole singularity thing is a red herring. It's a symptom of the
decline of thinking in our age that most folks assume without proof that
'modern science' has proven that the human mind is just the pure
physical operation of the human brain under physical causation and
nothing else.
That argument isn't modern at all, and in fact was debunked quite
conclusively about 400 BC. We can't think without our brains, but we
don't altogether think *with* them. If pure physical causation (what
Aristotle called 'efficient causation') is all that's going on when our
brains change from one state to the next, there's no room for *logical*
causation at all. A madman's brain is just as good as Einstein's, on
that view, and if (per impossibile) the state of a brain happened to
correspond to one step of a logical argument, there would be no way to
even notice that the next step went wrong, let alone correct it.
This was a philosophical commonplace up until our culture lost its mind,
sometime around 1955.
NB this has nothing to do with any particular religion--Plato and
Aristotle knew all about it.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
The model of a brain as a bunch of threshold logic gates (the Neural
Network approach) is silly. Prop delay alone makes the idea absurd.
Single-celled critters can do pretty cool adaptive stuff.
The brain must be quantum mechanical at the cellular level, with all
the mysticism and noncausal behavior of quantum mechanics.
Penrose made much the same claim in "The Emperor's New Mind"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind
Nobody took him seriously, and he's got a rather better track record than you have.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
C
Clifford Heath
Guest
On 09/07/15 12:20, John Larkin wrote:
It's only a question of degree, not fundamental differences. No quantum
wooo is required here.
On the other hand, quite a lot is known about how to interpret the
output of the cochlear. They've tapped into individual nerves and can
figure out what the ear is hearing. How else would they have known what
stimulae to send? The brain is adaptable, learning to understand
messages that are off-target, but being on-target reduces the training
needs.
If you want more detail, I can put you in touch with a buddy who's a
senior communications engineer at Cochlear Inc, just across town from
here. But I suspect that blind assertion is more palatable to you than
research.
Clifford Heath, CTO, Infinuendo.
It's only a question of degree, not fundamental differences. No quantum
wooo is required here.
On the other hand, quite a lot is known about how to interpret the
output of the cochlear. They've tapped into individual nerves and can
figure out what the ear is hearing. How else would they have known what
stimulae to send? The brain is adaptable, learning to understand
messages that are off-target, but being on-target reduces the training
needs.
If you want more detail, I can put you in touch with a buddy who's a
senior communications engineer at Cochlear Inc, just across town from
here. But I suspect that blind assertion is more palatable to you than
research.
Clifford Heath, CTO, Infinuendo.
J
John Larkin
Guest
On Wed, 8 Jul 2015 16:57:48 +0000 (UTC), Frank Miles
<fpm@u.washington.edu> wrote:
OK, explain how those things actually work.
For very small values of "moderately." When you can tap into an optic
nerve and project the image on a computer screen, or go the other way
and fix blindness, I'll be impressed thet you understand how this
stuff works.
Since nobody knows how nerves or brains work, why exclude any
possibility? And why would evolution discard any useful phemomena?
So many people don't actually believe in evolution.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
<fpm@u.washington.edu> wrote:
OK, explain how those things actually work.
For very small values of "moderately." When you can tap into an optic
nerve and project the image on a computer screen, or go the other way
and fix blindness, I'll be impressed thet you understand how this
stuff works.
Since nobody knows how nerves or brains work, why exclude any
possibility? And why would evolution discard any useful phemomena?
So many people don't actually believe in evolution.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
D
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn
Guest
On Wed, 8 Jul 2015 14:16:56 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@gmail.com> Gave us:
Folks tried to ridicule Tiny Tim too, but the guy was a genius.
<bill.sloman@gmail.com> Gave us:
Folks tried to ridicule Tiny Tim too, but the guy was a genius.
J
John Larkin
Guest
On Thu, 09 Jul 2015 02:39:27 +1000, Clifford Heath
<no.spam@please.net> wrote:
Have they? Cochlear implants just stimulate local sections of the
cochlea; they don't drive the auditory nerves and are hardly a bionic
ear. Similarly, people can tickle spots on the retina and produce
crude images, sensations of light, but nobody can decode or encode
data in the optic nerve.
The bionic
Tapping into the optic nerve would demonstrate serious understanding
of how the nervous system works. Zapping spots on the retina is
relatively easy, really just a mechanical problem. A real bionic eye
would *replace* the eye, not just poke it.
The retina is arguable part of the brain - it does a ton of
preprocessing - so the optic nerve is internal to the brain. I don't
think anybody understands the encoding, or how images are processed on
the other end. But how does a finger transmit its various sensations
up into the brain?
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
<no.spam@please.net> wrote:
Have they? Cochlear implants just stimulate local sections of the
cochlea; they don't drive the auditory nerves and are hardly a bionic
ear. Similarly, people can tickle spots on the retina and produce
crude images, sensations of light, but nobody can decode or encode
data in the optic nerve.
The bionic
Tapping into the optic nerve would demonstrate serious understanding
of how the nervous system works. Zapping spots on the retina is
relatively easy, really just a mechanical problem. A real bionic eye
would *replace* the eye, not just poke it.
The retina is arguable part of the brain - it does a ton of
preprocessing - so the optic nerve is internal to the brain. I don't
think anybody understands the encoding, or how images are processed on
the other end. But how does a finger transmit its various sensations
up into the brain?
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
M
Martin Brown
Guest
On 09/07/2015 03:20, John Larkin wrote:
Actually they are getting close to being able to fake signals from
various external sensors at modest resolutions and the brain network
adjusts to use the crude data presented to it. They have also got a lot
better at decoding signals sent to muscle groups for bionic limbs.
That we don't fully understand everything about the brain is a natural
part of bleeding edge scientific research and in no way invalidates what
has been done so far. Current understanding is incomplete it might even
be wrong but until there is a better predictive scientific theory there
is no point in replacing it with new age handwaving magyck.
It ever there was a proponent of cargo cult science it is John Larkin.
You keep moving the goalposts so as to invoke magyck quantum weirdness
for everything that *you* don't understand without bothering to look at
what is already being done in the field.
As a series of nerve impulses - faking them is a serious research
project for providing feedback from prosthetic limbs. BBC take on it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17183888
Quantum effects are typically limited to relatively small scales at the
molecular level. Cells do use every quentum trick available to them to
convert light or food into energy available for electron transfer. But
at the higher level of the cellular scale differential equations suffice
to describe the system.
It is much the same as with thermodynamics - you don't need to know the
exact details of every particle motion to work out the bulk properties.
Neural nets are a very crude approximation to how the brain works. That
they work as well as they do in practice is somewhat surprising.
That is the problem. John assumes that anything he can imagine is
reality and that experienced researchers in the field and all the peer
reviewed literature is wrong just because he says so.
--
Regards,
Martin Brown
Actually they are getting close to being able to fake signals from
various external sensors at modest resolutions and the brain network
adjusts to use the crude data presented to it. They have also got a lot
better at decoding signals sent to muscle groups for bionic limbs.
That we don't fully understand everything about the brain is a natural
part of bleeding edge scientific research and in no way invalidates what
has been done so far. Current understanding is incomplete it might even
be wrong but until there is a better predictive scientific theory there
is no point in replacing it with new age handwaving magyck.
It ever there was a proponent of cargo cult science it is John Larkin.
You keep moving the goalposts so as to invoke magyck quantum weirdness
for everything that *you* don't understand without bothering to look at
what is already being done in the field.
As a series of nerve impulses - faking them is a serious research
project for providing feedback from prosthetic limbs. BBC take on it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17183888
Quantum effects are typically limited to relatively small scales at the
molecular level. Cells do use every quentum trick available to them to
convert light or food into energy available for electron transfer. But
at the higher level of the cellular scale differential equations suffice
to describe the system.
It is much the same as with thermodynamics - you don't need to know the
exact details of every particle motion to work out the bulk properties.
Neural nets are a very crude approximation to how the brain works. That
they work as well as they do in practice is somewhat surprising.
That is the problem. John assumes that anything he can imagine is
reality and that experienced researchers in the field and all the peer
reviewed literature is wrong just because he says so.
--
Regards,
Martin Brown
M
Martin Brown
Guest
On 08/07/2015 16:55, John Larkin wrote:
It might well work best there since the average speeds are low and
predictable vehicles can convoy together much closer together under
machine control than with human reaction times 100-1000ms.
Too many drivers these days are using cell phones or worse texting.
Complex apparent behaviour can emerge from the interaction of a few very
simple rules. Conways simple 2D automaton Life is Turing complete.
Yours is the cargo cult science. Anything you presently don't understand
you put down to handwaving quantum mysticism.
There is no compelling reason to invoke anything more sophisticated than
a lot of non-linear differential equations to model neurons.
I am saying that on the scale of a typical cell quantum effects are
largely limited to the individual molecules. There is no cellular aura
of new age quantum mysticism needed to explain what is observed.
This could change but at the moment it looks exceedingly unlikely that
anything other than the huge network combinatorial factors are relevant.
--
Regards,
Martin Brown
It might well work best there since the average speeds are low and
predictable vehicles can convoy together much closer together under
machine control than with human reaction times 100-1000ms.
Too many drivers these days are using cell phones or worse texting.
Complex apparent behaviour can emerge from the interaction of a few very
simple rules. Conways simple 2D automaton Life is Turing complete.
Yours is the cargo cult science. Anything you presently don't understand
you put down to handwaving quantum mysticism.
There is no compelling reason to invoke anything more sophisticated than
a lot of non-linear differential equations to model neurons.
I am saying that on the scale of a typical cell quantum effects are
largely limited to the individual molecules. There is no cellular aura
of new age quantum mysticism needed to explain what is observed.
This could change but at the moment it looks exceedingly unlikely that
anything other than the huge network combinatorial factors are relevant.
--
Regards,
Martin Brown
F
Frank Miles
Guest
On Wed, 08 Jul 2015 19:20:02 -0700, John Larkin wrote:
You're wrong - cochlear implants _do_ drive the auditory nerve. The
most common maladies that lead to these implants involve a loss of the
inner hair cells, which ordinarily transduce the vibration at the
basilar membrane into vesicular releases which trigger the auditory
nerve. It is these hair cells that are so commonly damaged by drugs,
loud sounds, certain diseases, and other physiological insults.
No, we don't _completely_ understand the coding of sound OR light in the
auditory or optic nerves. Some researchers have only recently discovered
some new cell types in the retina (which is turning out to be more
complex than most of us thought). We have learned a lot, enough to have
useful cochlear prostheses, and perhaps soon a vestibular prosthetic
device (i.e. for balance e.g. for Meniere's patients)
It's a mixture. There's greater understanding of how and where a variety
of visual features are handled - color, shape, continuity of visual forms,
movement, and many other features. It's not a complete understanding,
but it's exciting and new things are being discovered all the time!
There are a variety of coding strategies used in peripheral nerves. Since
we don't have an absolutely complete understanding of the whole system,
we can't assume we completely understand the encoding.
[snip]
You're wrong - cochlear implants _do_ drive the auditory nerve. The
most common maladies that lead to these implants involve a loss of the
inner hair cells, which ordinarily transduce the vibration at the
basilar membrane into vesicular releases which trigger the auditory
nerve. It is these hair cells that are so commonly damaged by drugs,
loud sounds, certain diseases, and other physiological insults.
No, we don't _completely_ understand the coding of sound OR light in the
auditory or optic nerves. Some researchers have only recently discovered
some new cell types in the retina (which is turning out to be more
complex than most of us thought). We have learned a lot, enough to have
useful cochlear prostheses, and perhaps soon a vestibular prosthetic
device (i.e. for balance e.g. for Meniere's patients)
It's a mixture. There's greater understanding of how and where a variety
of visual features are handled - color, shape, continuity of visual forms,
movement, and many other features. It's not a complete understanding,
but it's exciting and new things are being discovered all the time!
There are a variety of coding strategies used in peripheral nerves. Since
we don't have an absolutely complete understanding of the whole system,
we can't assume we completely understand the encoding.
[snip]
J
John Larkin
Guest
On Thu, 09 Jul 2015 04:41:30 +1000, Clifford Heath
<no.spam@please.net> wrote:
By fooling around.
It was observed that the cochlea senses different frequencies at
different points along its spiral. It's trivial to stimulate single
points electrically and have subjects report what they hear. Then it's
mechanically difficult but logically trivial to insert multiple
electrodes, and fiddle with algorithms until the subject reports sorta
intelligible sounds. No deep understanding is required to do any of
that. Fiddle until it works.
The brain is adaptable, learning to understand
I bet that buddy couldn't cut out the cochlea and stimulate the
auditory nerve to any useful effect.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
<no.spam@please.net> wrote:
By fooling around.
It was observed that the cochlea senses different frequencies at
different points along its spiral. It's trivial to stimulate single
points electrically and have subjects report what they hear. Then it's
mechanically difficult but logically trivial to insert multiple
electrodes, and fiddle with algorithms until the subject reports sorta
intelligible sounds. No deep understanding is required to do any of
that. Fiddle until it works.
The brain is adaptable, learning to understand
I bet that buddy couldn't cut out the cochlea and stimulate the
auditory nerve to any useful effect.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
J
John Larkin
Guest
On Thu, 09 Jul 2015 09:10:34 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Quantum mechanics is new age handwaving? I suppose it is, being
formalized less than 100 years ago.
You define yourself by the things you declare to be impossible. The
history of science is punctuated by amazing, shocking discoveries,
which often have to wait for acceptance until the existing scientific
establishment dies off.
That's admirable, but it is experimental tinkering with the mechanism.
You have a differential equation that explains visual memory? Show us!
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Quantum mechanics is new age handwaving? I suppose it is, being
formalized less than 100 years ago.
You define yourself by the things you declare to be impossible. The
history of science is punctuated by amazing, shocking discoveries,
which often have to wait for acceptance until the existing scientific
establishment dies off.
That's admirable, but it is experimental tinkering with the mechanism.
You have a differential equation that explains visual memory? Show us!
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com