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To engineer anything, we need to understand it. The options you are weighing are between understanding the brain so we can write programs that run on robots tha
by unabst 10y ago
To engineer anything, we need to understand it. The options you are weighing are between understanding the brain so we can write programs that run on robots that would exhibit human-like behavior, and understanding the nature of organic evolution to the point where we could simulate every organism's survival and death that lead to the autonomous design and formation of the human brain. To estimate engineer-ability requires understanding also, but I think we understand enough to know simulating the whole of evolution is not an easier problem.
- ThomPete 10y agoThe brain wasn't built, it emerged. The question really is what he have to engineer. My belief is that it's not the brain we need to build but the environment it can emerge in.
- Retra 10y agoA single human brain is far simpler and smaller than the billions of years of history and the trillions of non-human brains that you're suggesting be reproduced. The human brain did not evolve in isolation. It evolved to fill a niche that was created by a massive amount of history and circumstance.
- dkersten 10y agoIf we can wait hundreds of millions of (simulated) years, then sure. But if we don't want to simulate the environment in the hopes that it will eventually emerge, eg, because we want it sooner rather than later, then we need to engineer it to be so and for that we need some level of understanding.