4 ms·

It's been a few years, but I recall there being research into 100% mapping out crab or ant behavior and it was getting to a point of being quite accurate. Mamm

by fiblye 9y ago

It's been a few years, but I recall there being research into 100% mapping out crab or ant behavior and it was getting to a point of being quite accurate. Mammal brains have a few extra layers of complexity, but none of those layers involve magic. If ever we get around to "solving" one animal's brain, it shows that others can be as well.

plopz 9y ago
Maybe we'll be able to finally prove that free will doesn't exist.
- Afton 9y ago
  It's not that it does, or doesn't exist. It's that the whole common sense notion is literally incoherent.
  - mcphage 9y ago
    Thank you! I agree. "Free will" doesn't even mean anything.
  - gmac 9y ago
    Indeed. I've always found this a thoughtful discussion: https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/free-will/v-1 https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/free-will/v-...
- QuantumGravy 9y ago
  Religions and denominations of the same religion won't even agree on the nature or existence of free will. Why everyone else is so concerned about the same, I don't understand. It's more philosophy than science in most discussions. If acting as if your actions had internal agency offers better chances of survival, that's a good enough fudge for nature.
- chongli 9y ago
  There's no way we'll be able to do that until we have an agreed-upon definition of free will. Good luck with that. We can't even come up with rigorous definitions of many common, related words: intelligence, thinking/thought, life. Heck, we can't even define pornography! All of these ultimately boil down to "I know it when I see it". This sort of definition is not good enough for scientific inquiry. For that reason, scientists tend to avoid such questions.
logicallee 9y ago
>none of those layers involve magic This is a bold claim. How do you know? The brain could be magical. I think everyone on this forum who is not a Christian can agreee that the Christian God is in some sense "magical". Further, Genesis 1:27 says "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." While this falls short of saying that, like God, humans are magical, to date we have no proof they are not. In that case the brain might be, for example, a magic antenna to another plane. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14770230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14770230 The choices are that the brain is magical or that strong AI that can do anything a human brain can do (make judgments, parse text and images, underdtand culture, communicate intelligently with humans), is in some sense inevitable. You cannot simply discount the possibility of magic. You must let people who are committed to denying the future have their out. If I were speaking with Lord Kelvin I would allow him the possibility that birds are magical and not subject to the laws of physics, whereas any machine humanity might ever build is - so that it is certainly possible that in 100,000 years, no one will build a heavier-than-air flying machine. The essence of flight might be magical. So, too, the essence of thinking.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Ultimately that boils down to a semantic distinction, and not one advancing the state of knowledge. Calling some phenomenon magical or mysterious just means you don't want to study it, not that it can't be studied.
  - logicallee 9y ago
    I don't believe in the existence of magic so at a practical level I have to agree with you.
- shawnz 9y ago
  > the Christian God is in some sense "magical" ... In that case the brain might be, for example, a magic antenna to another plane. If those things were shown to really exist, then they would be part of what we understand to be our reality. So they wouldn't be magical, it's just that our understanding of what makes up reality could be incomplete.
aschampion 9y ago
> It's been a few years, but I recall there being research into 100% mapping out crab or ant behavior and it was getting to a point of being quite accurate. We are nowhere near this point. There are specific, intentionally constrained behaviors in model animals such that we can monitor the activity of specific sets of neurons and make predictions (meaning anywhere from better-than-chance to perfect accuracy) of behavioral output. This is far from "mapping out behavior" for an entire organism. As for the GPP about a comprehensive look-up mechanism from all possible states of dynamics in the human brain to semantic descriptions of mental states: the problem is that trying to implement such a mechanism within the physical and thus computational constraints of our world will result, with high likelihood, in something that functions rather like a brain.

by fiblye 9y ago

plopz 9y ago

Maybe we'll be able to finally prove that free will doesn't exist.

Afton 9y ago
It's not that it does, or doesn't exist. It's that the whole common sense notion is literally incoherent.
- mcphage 9y ago
  Thank you! I agree. "Free will" doesn't even mean anything.
- gmac 9y ago
  Indeed. I've always found this a thoughtful discussion: https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/free-will/v-1 https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/free-will/v-...
QuantumGravy 9y ago
Religions and denominations of the same religion won't even agree on the nature or existence of free will. Why everyone else is so concerned about the same, I don't understand. It's more philosophy than science in most discussions. If acting as if your actions had internal agency offers better chances of survival, that's a good enough fudge for nature.
chongli 9y ago
There's no way we'll be able to do that until we have an agreed-upon definition of free will. Good luck with that. We can't even come up with rigorous definitions of many common, related words: intelligence, thinking/thought, life. Heck, we can't even define pornography! All of these ultimately boil down to "I know it when I see it". This sort of definition is not good enough for scientific inquiry. For that reason, scientists tend to avoid such questions.

logicallee 9y ago

>none of those layers involve magic This is a bold claim. How do you know? The brain could be magical. I think everyone on this forum who is not a Christian can agreee that the Christian God is in some sense "magical". Further, Genesis 1:27 says "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." While this falls short of saying that, like God, humans are magical, to date we have no proof they are not. In that case the brain might be, for example, a magic antenna to another plane. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14770230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14770230 The choices are that the brain is magical or that strong AI that can do anything a human brain can do (make judgments, parse text and images, underdtand culture, communicate intelligently with humans), is in some sense inevitable. You cannot simply discount the possibility of magic. You must let people who are committed to denying the future have their out. If I were speaking with Lord Kelvin I would allow him the possibility that birds are magical and not subject to the laws of physics, whereas any machine humanity might ever build is - so that it is certainly possible that in 100,000 years, no one will build a heavier-than-air flying machine. The essence of flight might be magical. So, too, the essence of thinking.

vinceguidry 9y ago
Ultimately that boils down to a semantic distinction, and not one advancing the state of knowledge. Calling some phenomenon magical or mysterious just means you don't want to study it, not that it can't be studied.
- logicallee 9y ago
  I don't believe in the existence of magic so at a practical level I have to agree with you.
shawnz 9y ago
> the Christian God is in some sense "magical" ... In that case the brain might be, for example, a magic antenna to another plane. If those things were shown to really exist, then they would be part of what we understand to be our reality. So they wouldn't be magical, it's just that our understanding of what makes up reality could be incomplete.

aschampion 9y ago

> It's been a few years, but I recall there being research into 100% mapping out crab or ant behavior and it was getting to a point of being quite accurate. We are nowhere near this point. There are specific, intentionally constrained behaviors in model animals such that we can monitor the activity of specific sets of neurons and make predictions (meaning anywhere from better-than-chance to perfect accuracy) of behavioral output. This is far from "mapping out behavior" for an entire organism. As for the GPP about a comprehensive look-up mechanism from all possible states of dynamics in the human brain to semantic descriptions of mental states: the problem is that trying to implement such a mechanism within the physical and thus computational constraints of our world will result, with high likelihood, in something that functions rather like a brain.