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The human mind certainly involves systems other than the brain, like the limbic system. Even the face is involved in communicating emotion between various parts
by tlb 8y ago
The human mind certainly involves systems other than the brain, like the limbic system. Even the face is involved in communicating emotion between various parts of the brain, which is why you can make yourself happier by smiling.
But it seems extremely likely to me that some arrangement of material could create a mind that, if not exactly human, we would recognize as intelligent and useful.
If you're skeptical of the materialist assumption, a productive line of inquiry is to investigate what capabilities of a mind can or cannot be replicated by computers or other material devices. That probably looks a lot like doing AI research.
- yters 8y agoYes, for example Solomonoff induction (SI) requires infinite computational capacity. If SI is representative of the human mind, then the human mind cannot be physical.
- tlb 8y agoThe human mind isn't exactly Solomonoff, because we often hold theories that are more complicated than necessary. Working towards simpler scientific or mathematical theories takes decades. So it seems like we don't just have SI in the inner loop. People have made plausible attempts to approximate SI with practical amounts of computing, like AIXI (https://arxiv.org/abs/0909.0801 https://arxiv.org/abs/0909.0801).
- yters 8y agoIt is not so much whether we identify the simplest theory, but that we are so good at inferring principles and predicting, whether in science or in day to day life. SI is a formalization of this general capability. Perhaps a finite TM can approximate SI to some degree, but to what degree, and is this degree equivalent to human capability? I don't know of any evidence of the latter. If you do, let me know!