What the brain's wiring looks like • Hacker News Board

Re: What the brain's wiring looks like

#101

Post by wildmusings » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 10:00 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #65

goatlover wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brain and consciousness need not be magic for the philosophical issue to arise. The fundamental question is objectivity vs subjectivity. Consciousness is subjective, yet science is an objective affair. Can the objective be used to explain the subjective, or is the objective an abstraction from intersubjective experiences? If it's the latter, then the project to explain everything in scientific terms is doomed, be…

> The brain and consciousness need not be magic for the philosophical issue to arise. The fundamental question is objectivity vs subjectivity. Consciousness is subjective, yet science is an objective affair. Pain is also "subjective", but we understand pain, who it develops and moves in the body, etc. Plus, that consciousness is subjective is another way of saying we haven't mapped it specifically, so this is a kind…

We can understand everything we'd like about how brain processes pain, but it's questionable whether we can know how that processing then becomes the subjective experience of pain.

Re: What the brain's wiring looks like

#102

Post by mmerlin » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

chridal wrote: post #82

dunk010 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely dead wrong. It's 2.5Gb, where Gb = Giga bases . Learn you a genomics, son. https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v420/n6915/full/nature...

No need for being rude.

I read that last line as funny / tongue-in-cheek, as if every normal person learns their ATGC's as easily as their ABC's :-D

Re: What the brain's wiring looks like

#103

Post by tux1968 » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 10:52 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #101

coldtea wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The brain and consciousness need not be magic for the philosophical issue to arise. The fundamental question is objectivity vs subjectivity. Consciousness is subjective, yet science is an objective affair. Pain is also "subjective", but we understand pain, who it develops and moves in the body, etc. Plus, that consciousness is subjective is another way of saying we haven't mapped it specifically, so this is a kind…

We can understand everything we'd like about how brain processes pain, but it's questionable whether we can know how that processing then becomes the subjective experience of pain.

I don't understand why this notion of subjective experience keeps being raised. Why is it important?

Once we know enough to create a synthetic brain, it really doesn't matter what its subjective experience is, we will judge it the same way we judge our fellow humans.

And this is fine since we have no way to truly know the subjective experience of say color for any other human either. Yet we don't question each others claim of consciousness.

It's enough that we can both say "blue" to name the ~ 490–450nm wavelength of light regardless of our personal subjective experience of it.

Re: What the brain's wiring looks like

#104

Post by wildmusings » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 1:00 AM UTC

tux1968 wrote: post #103

wildmusings wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can understand everything we'd like about how brain processes pain, but it's questionable whether we can know how that processing then becomes the subjective experience of pain.

I don't understand why this notion of subjective experience keeps being raised. Why is it important? Once we know enough to create a synthetic brain, it really doesn't matter what its subjective experience is, we will judge it the same way we judge our fellow humans. And this is fine since we have no way to truly know the subjective experience of say color for any other human either. Yet we don't question each others…

Because subjective experience is not a one way affair. It clearly plays at least some functional role. The proof of that is that we're having a conversation about it.

Re: What the brain's wiring looks like

#105

Post by wildmusings » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 1:50 AM UTC

IanCal wrote: post #57

wildmusings wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate that you're being downvoted. This is a classic and unsolved problem in the philosophy of mind and the people stating confidently that of course the mind is a purely physical system are ignoring many problems with that hypothesis, not least the lack of any conclusive evidence for it.

Can you really have conclusive evidence for "there is no magic"?

You can. We have a complete reductionist account for how computers work. We know there's no magic. We don't have such an account for the human brain, and it's hard to see how any explanation of brain function could account for consciousness (i.e. subjective experience). The most likely explanation in my opinion is that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe that our minds have evolved to tap into.

Re: What the brain's wiring looks like

#106

Post by tux1968 » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 2:49 AM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #104

tux1968 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why this notion of subjective experience keeps being raised. Why is it important? Once we know enough to create a synthetic brain, it really doesn't matter what its subjective experience is, we will judge it the same way we judge our fellow humans. And this is fine since we have no way to truly know the subjective experience of say color for any other human either. Yet we don't question each others…

Because subjective experience is not a one way affair. It clearly plays at least some functional role. The proof of that is that we're having a conversation about it.

But the same conversation could be had with a synthetic brain. It's no more important than any other feature of brain functionality. What I don't understand is how this concern about subjectivity limits us in understanding consciousness and brain functionality.

It doesn't mean we can experience the subjective states of a synthetic brain or another human, but we can definitely replicate the physical aspects of the brain that produce them.

Re: What the brain's wiring looks like

#107

Post by wildmusings » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 3:47 AM UTC

tux1968 wrote: post #106

wildmusings wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because subjective experience is not a one way affair. It clearly plays at least some functional role. The proof of that is that we're having a conversation about it.

But the same conversation could be had with a synthetic brain. It's no more important than any other feature of brain functionality. What I don't understand is how this concern about subjectivity limits us in understanding consciousness and brain functionality. It doesn't mean we can experience the subjective states of a synthetic brain or another human, but we can definitely replicate the physical aspects of the bra…

I think it's likely that the brain violates the Church-Turing thesis. It doesn't seem possible that a Turing machine can produce subjective/conscious experience. This strongly limits our ability to make a synthetic brain via solely computation.

Update:

I'm not sure I'd say supernatural. I think consciousness is different in kind from the rest of how we understand the universe to work. It seems likely that it's a fundamental property of the universe.

I see this all pretty much the same way that the philosopher David Chalmers does. He probably does a better job of explaining it than me. It's worth looking at his thinking on the matter.

Re: What the brain's wiring looks like

#108

Post by tux1968 » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:17 AM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #107

tux1968 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the same conversation could be had with a synthetic brain. It's no more important than any other feature of brain functionality. What I don't understand is how this concern about subjectivity limits us in understanding consciousness and brain functionality. It doesn't mean we can experience the subjective states of a synthetic brain or another human, but we can definitely replicate the physical aspects of the bra…

I think it's likely that the brain violates the Church-Turing thesis. It doesn't seem possible that a Turing machine can produce subjective/conscious experience. This strongly limits our ability to make a synthetic brain via solely computation. Update: I'm not sure I'd say supernatural. I think consciousness is different in kind from the rest of how we understand the universe to work. It seems likely that it's a fund…

So you believe that consciousness is supernatural and not the product of a physical brain. I don't see any reason to believe that, but it definitely makes it clear why we hold differing opinions.

Edit:

I think all that philosophy is going to have to be updated when we eventually start having conversations with synthetic brains that can tell us about their sense of consciousness ;-)

Edit 2:

If we had a device that could instantly make a carbon-copy (unintended pun) of a human (let's say me), identical down to the last atom, what you're saying is that copy would NOT be conscious. That it is not enough to capture the physical nature of someone to capture the state of consciousness.. that it is beyond physical. I just don't know how to come to terms with that idea. To me consciousness simply must be a product of our physical bodies and thus within the purview of rational study and comprehension.

Re: What the brain's wiring looks like

#109

Post by babyrainbow » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:05 AM UTC

GolDDranks wrote: post #97

babyrainbow wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the whole domain of physics to be P and our current knowledge to be a subset of it, P'. Is there any reason for the operations of brain to be limited to those involving P' only?

There is. It's called quantum field theory. QFT has the peculiar property that the interactions between elementary particles in it are symmetric in space and time. What that means, is that if an exotic particle is capable of interacting with some of the commonly known everyday particles, which we know the brain is made of, we are also capable of producing that exotic particle using our common, everyday particles. Tha…

Sorry. Couldn't make sense of most of your comment. Can you explain how these exotic particles is relevant at all?

Re: What the brain's wiring looks like

#110

Post by dunk010 » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:28 AM UTC

josefx wrote: post #99

dunk010 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we'll all have to just imagine you're right, then. Mwahahaha!

The definition of a turing machine is mathematically perfect. No threading, no IO, no error correction, no errors, no asynchronous events, no processes fighting over shared resources, no resources that might or might not disappear at the blink of an eye, in short no nothing. In that it is equivalent to a spherical brain, any complexity relevant to the problem at hand removed.

You're making things far too complex, and confusing the issue, and yourself, as a result. Let's turn to the first sentence from Wikipedia:

"A Turing machine ... manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules"

Whichever programming language you are fond of ultimately reduces to this mode of computation. However, with DNA, RNA, and Proteins, that is not the case. The way that we compute is simplistic compared with the way that biology computes. Thus: the crude analogy in fact hinders understanding, and should be discarded.