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Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

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Re: Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

#31

Post by wihon »

His last comment,

The media will not end their infatuation with this pseudo-scientific dingbat

chimes with the large majority of bold scientific claims that appear in the press. For example, not that long ago the press jumped on Craig Venter's (http://bit.ly/uEC5) 'artificial cell' (http://bit.ly/c27AL5), hailing it as the beginning of man-made organisms and making bold predictions about the future of life itself, riling up environmental groups no end. (I'm not saying that wasn't a great acheivement. But all his team really did was take out one DNA tape and put back an identical, if newer version. Bread and yoghurt manufacturers have been doing a smaller version of that for a long time. Not exactly playing God.)

It would be nice if there was a scientific-bullshit detector that made sure the press didn't go crazy over wild claims. Proposal for a startup, anyone? :)

Re: Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

#32

Post by cageface »

rsheridan6 wrote: post #16

I don't find these criticisms convincing. We haven't solved the protein folding problem? So solve it. Is there some reason to believe it won't ever be solved? If you had a sufficiently accurate simulation of a cell or organism (which we don't, but we might someday), you could do experiments on it much cheaper and faster than in a lab. I do agree that there's no freakin' way this will be done in ten years, or in the 6…

There is Nobel-prize winning theory that shows that you won't ever truly solve this problem by studying the underlying atomic physics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine#Dissipative_stru...

Re: Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

#33

Post by yungchin »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #15
yungchin wrote: post #4

This rant unfortunately fails to clearly demonstrate how Kurzweil errs. It goes on about complexity and emergence, but why would complex interactions not emerge from a computer simulation just as they do in the real biochemical system? Nevertheless, my gut feeling, too, is that Kurzweil is mistaken. I can't quite put a finger on it yet, but at least one problem I see is this: Kurzweil seems to suggest that the observ…

why would complex interactions not emerge from a computer simulation One answer is "They will, and surprisingly quickly. But they will be a completely different set of complex interactions than are observed in the real world, because of some roundoff error in the binary representation of the N th digit of some apparently unimportant constant. Unfortunately, because the system is complex, you'll probably spend the res…

As for the first answer: we all have to learn to deal with roundoff error. That's not by principle an obstacle.

The other answer contains an implicit assumption that's not obviously correct: you suggest that complexity only arises when you enumerate every possible dimension of phase space. But physical simulations have been very successful at reproducing complex behaviour from simple rules, without taking into account every particle's state vector.

Finally, did you really try to equate my statement to the statement that Windows could be written in three days? ...

Re: Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

#34

Post by rsheridan6 »

getonit wrote: post #26
rsheridan6 wrote: post #16

I don't find these criticisms convincing. We haven't solved the protein folding problem? So solve it. Is there some reason to believe it won't ever be solved? If you had a sufficiently accurate simulation of a cell or organism (which we don't, but we might someday), you could do experiments on it much cheaper and faster than in a lab. I do agree that there's no freakin' way this will be done in ten years, or in the 6…

> We haven't solved the protein folding problem? So solve it. You sir, are a genius. To make up for my previous lack of initiative, I will do so immediately. Please arrange for the world to be ready for my announcement of the solution at noon tomorrow.

I'm not a genius, and you probably aren't either, but somebody probably is.

As far as I know there is no fundamental reason to assume that this problem won't be solved. It's not the halting problem.

Re: Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

#35

Post by rsheridan6 »

cageface wrote: post #32
rsheridan6 wrote: post #16

I don't find these criticisms convincing. We haven't solved the protein folding problem? So solve it. Is there some reason to believe it won't ever be solved? If you had a sufficiently accurate simulation of a cell or organism (which we don't, but we might someday), you could do experiments on it much cheaper and faster than in a lab. I do agree that there's no freakin' way this will be done in ten years, or in the 6…

There is Nobel-prize winning theory that shows that you won't ever truly solve this problem by studying the underlying atomic physics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine#Dissipative_stru...

I'm ignorant of this theory, but reading the link I don't see that it shows that protein folding can't be modeled.

Re: Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

#36

Post by mechanical_fish »

arethuza wrote: post #21
mechanical_fish wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is deadly dangerous for me to watch a clip from that film. It could inspire dozens of hours of rage-filled but closely-argued physics lectures. Given the slightest provocation, I will go all xkcd.com/386 on its ass and my actual career will die of neglect. Now, I need to go calm myself by fixing some bugs before I start to throw things. ;)

For what it's worth, I was having a conversation with my son (he's 11) about the key differences between scientific and religious beliefs - I think I'll use that film as an example of how it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference - especially when people present what are essentially religious beliefs using terminology derived from science. (NB I remember reading some Erich von Däniken books when I was 9 or…

That's the extra-infuriating thing. In theory, I'm completely down with the project of using parables based on science to convey religious ideas. Religion is built out of the raw materials that the world gives you. If we live in a world full of science and technology, we should expect our parables and our myths and our stories to be filled with science and technology.

(Cue a chorus line of Doctor Who cosplayers.)

So, in theory, I could have been okay with What the Bleep. In practice, however, it is just horribly grating -- way more grating than any SF, even the dumbest SF.

Re: Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

#37

Post by mechanical_fish »

yungchin wrote: post #33
mechanical_fish wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would complex interactions not emerge from a computer simulation One answer is "They will, and surprisingly quickly. But they will be a completely different set of complex interactions than are observed in the real world, because of some roundoff error in the binary representation of the N th digit of some apparently unimportant constant. Unfortunately, because the system is complex, you'll probably spend the res…

As for the first answer: we all have to learn to deal with roundoff error. That's not by principle an obstacle. The other answer contains an implicit assumption that's not obviously correct: you suggest that complexity only arises when you enumerate every possible dimension of phase space. But physical simulations have been very successful at reproducing complex behaviour from simple rules, without taking into accoun…

No, I'm poking fun at Kurzweil's 2020 deadline, not at you. You appear to have been wise enough not to specify a deadline...

As for this statement:

physical simulations have been very successful at reproducing complex behaviour from simple rules

Absolutely, but it doesn't follow that every complex behavior can be reproduced from simple rules. To overgeneralize from success in one field is the occupational illness of futurists. It's certainly a key problem for Singularitarians, who tend to get so enthusiastic about Moore's Law that they forget that most of the world has nothing to do with microelectronics.

Re: Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

#38

Post by akkartik »

nollidge wrote: post #28
akkartik wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another sleight of hand with that statement: Kurzweil's converting compressed data to lines of code, but humans don't write in high-entropy binary. So it's 800MB of code, not 50MB.

Not only that: it may be "only" 800 MB of code, but we have no access to the CPU it runs on.

I took a few stabs at expressing that idea before giving up. I like your attempt better than mine:

Even the 800MB of base pairs may have higher entropy than the machine language we're used to. 2000 lines of lisp or haskell are worlds away from 2000 lines of assembly.

Re: Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

#39

Post by chadmalik »

Ultimately the criticism of hard AI that sticks is that its enthusiasts are using a faulty "brain as computer" metaphor as the basis for their theories. The brain and digital computers do NOT work the same (the brain is not digital) and assuming they are, and that therefore clever-enough computer models can replicate the brain, seems to put very intelligent / brilliant CS people at risk of banging their head against a wall for decades.

More generally its fun to imagine things like this but also good to realize real world limits as we live in a finite world with limitations such as living 700 years not being at all likely (or desirable, IMHO).

Re: Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

#40

Post by yungchin »

bh42 wrote: post #13
yungchin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think that's his point too. But if you believe that the little details of biology emerge from the underlying physics, then maybe you only need to code the fundamental rules and can have all the rest automatically.

I think his point was that we can't code the fundamentals because those require linear time protein folding. And protein folding is one of those hard CS problems.

Well that's exactly my criticism: most of the author's objections boil down to "it's hard". Note that I don't disagree with him (nor with you), but this just doesn't help to expose the real issues with Kurzweil's estimates. To "protein folding is difficult" one can always reply "but we'll solve it in the next 10 years" - which I think is what the singularity-folks would say.

My simpler point is that Kurzweil's not taking a useful measure for the size of the system we're solving. (By the way, he plays the same kind of trick on his audience when he's pointing out there are only a few billion neurons in the brain - as if that were the only level of complexity in the brain).

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