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Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

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Re: Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

#21

Post by sullyj3 »

palosanto wrote: post #19

"If we achieve artificial intelligence without really understanding anything about intelligence itself then we will have no idea how to control it." Exactly. It's fascinating/scary to me how people still talk about A.I. or machine consciousness when we basically have no idea how consciousness works in general.

People who say things like that don't understand how to reason using limiting cases. We have artificial intelligence right now. Maybe not artificial general intelligence, but plenty of stuff traditionally thought of as being solely the domain of minds, is now performed by software. I'd say we understand it pretty well, and we certainly have the ability to control it.

Re: Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

#22

Post by nitrogen »

justinpaulson wrote: post #13
theaiguy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the brain does far more than performing computation In your opinion? Can you be more specific, and give examples of things the brain does that are not computable? This is trivially true in some senses, neurones have analogue responses, that the biology does a good (but not perfect) job of thresholding. But then, the same thing can be said of transistors. It's just we're able to engineer their analogue responses out…

I was mainly commenting on the OP's position that the author was 'not trained in CS'. Here is a list of things I believe that the human brain performs outside of computation: The irrational motivations that take us over when we feel love. The way that our mood can affect a decision. Taking a walk to enjoy the beauty of the sunset. Writing a satirical short story to express a political fallacy. Painting an image that…

Physics is (are?) essentially computational processes. The brain is a physical object, and therefore is a computer/computable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger_equation

That doesn't take anything away from the qualia of life; if anything, it makes life that much more amazing.

Re: Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

#23

Post by wwweston »

sudo_free_cake wrote: post #2

This is why people not trained in CS shouldn't speculate on it, when they do you get garbage like this. The brain performs computation, it is by definition a computer. Before modern computers there was a human job, called, computer. One who performs computations. The analogy of the brain to a computer is perfect, because the brain is a computer.

It's not clear how much the brain is like most of the computers even CS specialists or engineers have encountered. Actually, that's putting it mildly. AFAICT it's pretty accurate to say that the brain is about as far from a Von Neumann computer as it is from older favorite analogies like clockwork.

Also, while it's clear the brain can do computation, it's not clear that everything it does is computation.

Re: Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

#24

Post by wwweston »

yew wrote: post #18
justinpaulson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the author does in fact have a BS in CS. IMO, the brain does far more than performing computation. Sure humans were once "computers," but our ability to perform computation is not a valid argument to that computation, or the inner workings of our mind, being the same as digital computers performing computation. You failed to look up the author's credentials and I feel like you may have also failed to read the…

. . . our ability to perform computation is not a valid argument to that computation, or the inner workings of our mind, being the same as digital computers performing computation. No one [1] thinks that the human brain is likely to be a digital computer performing arithmetic on fixed-width binary integers and IEEE floating-point numbers. The argument for AI is simply that the mind appears to be a material object and…

> The argument for AI is simply that the mind appears to be a material object and the laws of physics appear to be Turing-equivalent.

This line of argument does achieve the goal of making it trivially true under the definitions given that the brain is a computer, but it seems to me it robs the assertion of insight -- e.g., the brain is computer because everything is a computer, including the nearest rock, since it's also a physics-governed system.

Re: Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

#25

Post by cgio »

innguest wrote: post #7
yarrel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a confusion of the algorithm that the brain implements with the algorithm that implements the brain. Penrose fills in the gaps with quantum woo. He's much beloved by people who can't quite bring themselves to quote Deepak Chopra.

Thank you for the straight-shot no-nonsense clarification. :)

I would not discount Penrose with the ease the GP does. These themes are quite philosophical, therefore all sides are making some big assumptions. I would read Penrose, Dennett, Chalmers, Tononi, Searle, Putnam and many others. In philosophy the trick is to disagree with everyone.

Re: Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

#26

Post by tjradcliffe »

Sharlin wrote: post #9
cheradenine01 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Go read Penrose. There are problems that the brain can solve, but you can (provably) show that an algorithm cannot. For example - tesselation on an infinite plane.

Such overconfidence. There is no generally accepted evidence that anything physical, whether brain or something else, can compute something a TM cannot compute. Penrose's claims are conjectures at best and pseudoscience at worst.

Since the brain is not just a Turing machine, it would be astonishing if it was limited to the capabilities of a Turning machine. The brain is capable of emulating a Turning machine, but that is just one of its capabilities.

The things a Turing machine lacks are interupts and I/O. If you hook sensors up to a Turing machine and make the tape change depending on the state of those sensors, you don't have a Turing machine any more, in the sense that it is no longer bound by any of Turing's computability theorems.

This insistence that the limits of the most limited model of computing (Turing machines) must be applicable to any machine that computes anything--including things that are not describe by any of the formal mathematical proofs on the limits of computability because they violate the most basic assumptions upon which those proofs depend--is one of the most curious aspects this debate.

So not even computers are just Turing machines, because they too have I/O. Turing's theorems are useful and important when considering certain practical questions of computability within the limited circumstances of a computation whose inputs are entirely specified at the start and which can't be interrupted by new information coming from the outside, but they just don't apply to cases where there are cells whose values aren't known until reality provides them via some sensor mechanism.

As such, it would be a little weird if we (and computers) can't compute things a Turing machine can't, given we have capabilities that a Turing machine doesn't have. There are even examples of such things. One due to Church (IIRC) that shows how we can solve certain instances of the halting problem that a Turing machine can't.

Re: Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

#27

Post by yew »

wwweston wrote: post #24
yew wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

. . . our ability to perform computation is not a valid argument to that computation, or the inner workings of our mind, being the same as digital computers performing computation. No one [1] thinks that the human brain is likely to be a digital computer performing arithmetic on fixed-width binary integers and IEEE floating-point numbers. The argument for AI is simply that the mind appears to be a material object and…

> The argument for AI is simply that the mind appears to be a material object and the laws of physics appear to be Turing-equivalent. This line of argument does achieve the goal of making it trivially true under the definitions given that the brain is a computer, but it seems to me it robs the assertion of insight -- e.g., the brain is computer because everything is a computer, including the nearest rock, since it's…

It certainly spectacularly fails to provide any advice on the practical problem of engineering AI [1]. The same is true of many non-constructive mathematical proofs, though - and I can't say I find such proofs any less insightful for that.

[1] Though, at least in my opinion, the cognitive science and AI research people have made great progress here - by studying real brains and the formalisms underlying computation.

Re: Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

#28

Post by TickleSteve »

justinpaulson wrote: post #14
UK-AL wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers can simulate electrical and chemical interactions, given enough computational power could you not simulate it at that level?

But that simulation still ignores a certain qualia that has grown from our existence. There is something else happening that we don't understand and I think it is a bit short-sighted to assume that we can simulate it, definitely not now, and possibly never.

your argument is equivalent to "we dont understand it, therefore it must be super-natural".

Re: Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

#29

Post by wwweston »

theaiguy wrote: post #8
cheradenine01 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Go read Penrose. There are problems that the brain can solve, but you can (provably) show that an algorithm cannot. For example - tesselation on an infinite plane.

Nope. Can I suggest you read Penrose again with a little more critical thought. There are problems it is possible to prove are not computable. But can you prove that human beings can solve them? Tessellation of the infinite plane? Please demonstrate a person that can solve this (i.e. not that they have a > 99.9% chance of being able to do it, or that you can show they can start out pretty successfully and you assume…

> But can you prove that human beings can solve them? > Tessellation of the infinite plane? Please demonstrate a person that can solve this

Penrose himself would seem to be a demonstration that there is at least one person, IIRC.

Is your argument that uncomputable really just means no guaranteed success, and that just because some human can get a solution to an uncomputable problem doesn't mean that it isn't following a set of algorithms?

Re: Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

#30

Post by nitwit005 »

justinpaulson wrote: post #13
theaiguy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the brain does far more than performing computation In your opinion? Can you be more specific, and give examples of things the brain does that are not computable? This is trivially true in some senses, neurones have analogue responses, that the biology does a good (but not perfect) job of thresholding. But then, the same thing can be said of transistors. It's just we're able to engineer their analogue responses out…

I was mainly commenting on the OP's position that the author was 'not trained in CS'. Here is a list of things I believe that the human brain performs outside of computation: The irrational motivations that take us over when we feel love. The way that our mood can affect a decision. Taking a walk to enjoy the beauty of the sunset. Writing a satirical short story to express a political fallacy. Painting an image that…

You're just describing behaviors that seem strange or unusual and then asserting that they are somehow not computation.

It doesn't matter what happens inside the brain. If it's governed by normal physics (no divine magic), there will be some computer program equivalent to it. We know that's true, even though we don't know how the brain works.

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