31–40 of 70 posts
When Newton came up with his universal law of gravitation, he also made an interesting observation. He had no idea why gravity worked the way it did, he could only model its behavior numerically. It's been over 300 years and we're still trying to figure out exactly how gravity works. But in a way it doesn't matter: his law has given humanity tremendous abilities it didn't have before. When Deep Blue won the Jeopardy…
When Newton came up with his universal law of gravitation, he also made an interesting observation. He had no idea why gravity worked the way it did, he could only model its behavior numerically. It's been over 300 years and we're still trying to figure out exactly how gravity works. But in a way it doesn't matter: his law has given humanity tremendous abilities it didn't have before. When Deep Blue won the Jeopardy…
We can and probably will build reasonably general AI, but you far more likely to see each generation of AI being an ever smaller improvement than any sort of runaway exponential progression. Not to mention hardware progress has slowed to a relative standstill.
When Newton came up with his universal law of gravitation, he also made an interesting observation. He had no idea why gravity worked the way it did, he could only model its behavior numerically. It's been over 300 years and we're still trying to figure out exactly how gravity works. But in a way it doesn't matter: his law has given humanity tremendous abilities it didn't have before. When Deep Blue won the Jeopardy…
There is firm evidence he had at least 3 serious views (and one fairly archaic one not many want to talk about) on the cause of physical gravitation. It is only the "modernists" who need for Newton be be not beholden to any of them that elevate and reiterate "Hypotheses non fingo" to some sort of rallying cry as if he had it tattooed on his torso.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It actually IS demonstrably true that the brain is made of atoms. That makes it a quantum system, which our modern physics tells us how to simulate. The use of the term "impractical" here refers to the fact that we don't have quantum computers and that we don't have the computing power required to simulate such a large quantum system. I'd say dismissing thousands of years of philosophy here is relevant, since it was…
quantum theory is a hypothesis. perhaps it's the best one so far for what the brain is made from. but it's truth is only as demonstrable as this: it's not yet been falsified.
Even then, we never stopped using classical mechanics even though they were proven to be wrong at a variety of scales. They just happen to very closely approximate reality in some contexts and are useful.
The fact of the matter is, we have tools that are correct as far as we know and they point towards thinking that every quantum system is computable. Until this has been proven wrong, the fallacy is believing the brain is different, not the other way around.
The part of the article that bothers me here the most is a leading nueroscientist asserting that the brain is not computable. That is demonstrably false: The brain is a quantum system, just like everything else in the universe. All quantum systems containing n qubits can be simulated by 2^n classical bits. It may very well be impractical to compute a decent sized brain, but that's still technically computable , which…
Even simpler, there is the question of whether the universe allows for arbitrary precision measurement of a physical quantity. If it does, then it may turn out that an observable physical quantity (e.g. the mass or charge of a fundamental particle) is a noncomputable real number. If it doesn't, then it may be possible to represent a neural network with noncomputable real weights, but impossible to actually measure them to enough accuracy to simulate the network on a given input.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It actually IS demonstrably true that the brain is made of atoms. That makes it a quantum system, which our modern physics tells us how to simulate. The use of the term "impractical" here refers to the fact that we don't have quantum computers and that we don't have the computing power required to simulate such a large quantum system. I'd say dismissing thousands of years of philosophy here is relevant, since it was…
quantum theory is a hypothesis. perhaps it's the best one so far for what the brain is made from. but it's truth is only as demonstrable as this: it's not yet been falsified.
There are also people who believe in god and all other sorts of things. Doesn't mean they should be taken seriously.
God means different things to different people, from one that watches everything you do, to one that maybe is a force out there, like gravity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It actually IS demonstrably true that the brain is made of atoms. That makes it a quantum system, which our modern physics tells us how to simulate. The use of the term "impractical" here refers to the fact that we don't have quantum computers and that we don't have the computing power required to simulate such a large quantum system. I'd say dismissing thousands of years of philosophy here is relevant, since it was…
quantum theory is a hypothesis. perhaps it's the best one so far for what the brain is made from. but it's truth is only as demonstrable as this: it's not yet been falsified.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
quantum theory is a hypothesis. perhaps it's the best one so far for what the brain is made from. but it's truth is only as demonstrable as this: it's not yet been falsified.
Quantum theory is a "hypothesis"? The entire foundation of modern electronics is based on quantum theory. It's something that has been tested over and over in labs and the regular world for over a century.
When Newton came up with his universal law of gravitation, he also made an interesting observation. He had no idea why gravity worked the way it did, he could only model its behavior numerically. It's been over 300 years and we're still trying to figure out exactly how gravity works. But in a way it doesn't matter: his law has given humanity tremendous abilities it didn't have before. When Deep Blue won the Jeopardy…