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Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#41

Post by taneq »

steve19 wrote: post #29
marvy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you so sure mice aren't conscious? Insects probably are not, I have no strong opinion on mice, but dolphins almost definitely are.

Do you believe mice ask themselves "why do I exist?" or whether it is better "to be, or not to be"? I am genuinely interested in your perspective. I adore my dog. He shows a wide range of what I believe to be genuine emotions. But I do not think he is self-aware, and by self-aware I mean able to contemplate his own existence (and therefor lack of existence). For that matter, I don't think he ever contemplates the lac…

Thought experiment: Dogs tend to act guilty when they know they've done something wrong. If you get two dogs together, and one does something naughty, do both act guilty afterwards or only one? If only one, then is it not reasonable to assume that the guilty dog has internally models the situation as "I did bad thing, I am bad dog" but the other dog internally models the situation as "I didn't do bad thing, I am good dog"?

I'm not saying dogs sit around quoting Kant, but they're highly social animals and I find it hard to believe they don't have some internal representation of themselves.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#42

Post by astazangasta »

plonh wrote: post #32
joe_the_user wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the limited understanding of neuroscience and the problems of Markram's vision, the whole affair had the earmarks of a doomed project. One can see similar problems in smaller effort by Palm Founder Jeff Hawkin's efforts to jump-start algorithmically oriented neuroscience research with his book On Intelligence and his company Numenta. With all the failures pretty visible now, I'd like to say I think there's some…

It is interesting that after Numenta's flop we have Google Brain and the academic neural net community deploying amazing successes.

These two things have nothing to do with each other. Deep learning, despite the use of the world "neural", has nothing to do with neuroscience, and mapping the human brain is not the same as making an artificial neural network.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#43

Post by taneq »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #2

>While he was still in Germany, his son Kai had been diagnosed with autism. As he told The Guardian in 2013, he wanted “to be able to step inside a simulation of my son's brain and see the world as he sees it.” This is a beautiful sentiment.

Or terrifying, if you consider that a simulation of his son's brain is, in a very real sense, his son. And that when he shuts that simulation down he's killing it.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#45

Post by sanxiyn »

foobarian wrote: post #28
Houshalter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's unlikely that C. elegans can't even learn . It doesn't have any brain structures equivalent to ones in humans. It's neurons work totally differently. They are so different from us that anything we learn probably wouldn't apply to human brains. A more intelligent animal, ideally a mammal, would be a much better choice.

The thing I was always wondering about brain simulations is how to determine what level of detail is enough. What if neurons evolved to take advantage of some funny quantum phenomena that we may not even know about yet, and without this the simulation won't work? For this reason I would think that getting a simple brain simulation to work would at least help enumerate the physics most involved in their function. Now…

Since brain has to work in a noisy environment, it is unlikely its function depends too much on details. Neurons can't depend on effects we don't know about, because if effect is large, we would know about it, and if effect is small, brain has to work with noise that size, so it is not necessary for us to get it right for its function. (It's a different matter for its exact output, but that's for later.)

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#46

Post by nerdo »

taneq wrote: post #41
steve19 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe mice ask themselves "why do I exist?" or whether it is better "to be, or not to be"? I am genuinely interested in your perspective. I adore my dog. He shows a wide range of what I believe to be genuine emotions. But I do not think he is self-aware, and by self-aware I mean able to contemplate his own existence (and therefor lack of existence). For that matter, I don't think he ever contemplates the lac…

Thought experiment: Dogs tend to act guilty when they know they've done something wrong. If you get two dogs together, and one does something naughty, do both act guilty afterwards or only one? If only one, then is it not reasonable to assume that the guilty dog has internally models the situation as "I did bad thing, I am bad dog" but the other dog internally models the situation as "I didn't do bad thing, I am good…

Dogs act guilty in response to being scolded, not because they know they've done something wrong.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#47

Post by kyberias »

marvy wrote: post #27
noselfrighteous wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear at all that Mouse->Human is simply a scaling problem. It would appear that there is some emergent phenomenon (consciousness) somewhere on the scale between mouse and human. This phenomenon may be triggered by a surplus of "computational resource" with respect to "body to be controlled", which I personally think is unlikely. It may be triggered by a matching of computational resource to controllable com…

What makes you so sure mice aren't conscious? Insects probably are not, I have no strong opinion on mice, but dolphins almost definitely are.

What tests do we have for the existence of consciousness in an organism and how did dolphin pass the tests?

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#48

Post by PhasmaFelis »

nerdo wrote: post #46
taneq wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought experiment: Dogs tend to act guilty when they know they've done something wrong. If you get two dogs together, and one does something naughty, do both act guilty afterwards or only one? If only one, then is it not reasonable to assume that the guilty dog has internally models the situation as "I did bad thing, I am bad dog" but the other dog internally models the situation as "I didn't do bad thing, I am good…

Dogs act guilty in response to being scolded, not because they know they've done something wrong.

No, we could always tell when my dog had gotten into something even before we found the evidence, because she'd be slinking around embodying the word "hangdog" from the moment we walked in the door. There's debate over whether this is actually guilt or simply anticipation of punishment, but there's no question that dogs know when they've done something they weren't supposed to do.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#49

Post by skimpycompiler »

A 10 part documentary is being made by film director Noah Hutton, with each installment detailing the year-long workings of the project at the EPFL. Having started filming in 2009, the documentary is planned to be released in 2020, after the years of filming and editiang have finished. Regular contributions from Henry Markram and the rest of the team provide an insight into the Blue Brain Project, while similar research tasks across the world are touched on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project#Documentary

This is going to be very interesting.

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