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To hold a concept of certain complexity within the brain the brain itself must have greater complexity than the concept. Thus humans can never understand the b

To hold a concept of certain complexity within the brain the brain itself must have greater complexity than the concept. Thus humans can never understand the brain because the brain has equal complexity to itself and for the brain to understand the brain then it must have greater complexity than itself which is impossible. Like many other things in life, we can only hope to understand a simplified and symbolic representation of brain. The problem is... it's quite possible that human intelligence itself has no higher level abstraction that we are capable of holding in our head. The processes that create consciousness, stripped of all the fluff and irrelevant details, may be of sufficient complexity that our brains will not be able understand what's going on. In short I fear that the ultimate goal of neurology may be a fruitless endeavor.

schmilk 7y ago
This sounds eerily similar to some of the early proofs of God. I think there may be a flaw in this line of thinking. |Thus humans can never understand the brain because the brain has equal complexity to itself and for the brain to understand the brain then it must have greater complexity than itself which is impossible. We don't need to know the entire state of the brain at any given moment to understand the mechanics of the brain, just as we don't need to know the entire state of every molecule on planet Earth in order to understand it's physics.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  Sigh. My statement of impossibility was understanding the brain understanding the brain as a whole. This is the only part that is IMPOSSIBLE. Your statement of modularizing portions of understanding into pieces to deal with complexity is isomorphic to my statement that we can only hope to understand A representation of the brain as a simplification. The chemists who understand molecules Understand the atom of the as a symbolic representation. The physicist understands the atom in a more detailed manner and sees the molecule as a symbolic representation. In short each human as individuals CAN ONLY understand the BRAIN as a symbolic simplification. This is the BEST possible outcome. What you are SAYING is the EXACT same thing I am SAYING. The one difference is... I am taking it ONE STEP further with a speculation on the nature of intelligence. There exists concepts in this world that are fundamental and cannot be modularized. It is a very reasonable speculation that the understanding of consciousness itself cannot be further modularized or subdivided. I am saying that in order to understand consciousness it may very well be, that we have to understand consciousness as a complex whole and this complexity may be too big for us to hold in our heads. This IS a realistic possibility. We are already seeing the limits to this with the black box nature of the neural nets we are generating. A possible future simulation of Consciousness may very well be encoded in the same blackbox that our deep fakes are also trapped in. Either way this was a speculation. You (and many others) completely misunderstanding and taking it the wrong way.
oscargrouch 7y ago
The problem with your line of reasoning, is that you are thinking in technological progress only through individual achievement. This is what technological iterations, through generations of human beings, give us all. Humans achieve super-human level of technological achievements because we iterate over what others have left for us. Knowledge is like a stair, made from the hard work of many great human beings, and even for hard problems, with enough ammount of iterations, and with consecutive progress (without social deterioration) we can achieve anything. Somebody will fill that "last" step in the stair that will make a paradigm shift to all of us..
- Agebor 7y ago
  Yes. You might find interesting some very rated ideas as this article - Bayesian Brain. In this view, the brain is a complex system that learns to adapt to and predict its environment, similar to other complex systems like even companies.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  Of course you completely missed the point. All I am saying is that this may not be possible. This is 100% what I am saying. Let me give you a concrete example: A visual recognition algorithm. Currently the way we do this is with a trained neural net. Can a large crack team of humans reproduce the logic of this neural net in a way where it isn't a black box? Perhaps we can use abstraction and subdivide the logic into modular pieces and have different teams of people handle different components.... Or perhaps we have to leave it as a blackbox learning process. Currently there is no way to subdivide the core logic of a neural net into something even A team of humans can understand. The best possible methods we have in handling this complexity is to leave it to an automated process rather than abstracting components of the problem so that humans can understand individual pieces. I AM not saying it will be impossible for humans to ever abstract this problem into something we can understand. I am only saying it MAY be impossible to subdivide, but it is CERTAINLY impossible for a human to understand the brain as a whole. There is the possibility that complex concepts exist in the universe that cannot be understood by breaking it apart into abstract concepts. A neural net has thousands of nodes as touch points and it is highly probable that to understand it you must understand all of the thousands nodes at the SAME TIME. This is a viable possibility. Leave it to the internet to read a comment and take it the wrong way.
sgt101 7y ago
Of course, we could use abstraction and analysis to tackle this...
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  Right. I'm on HN. I'm probably a programmer. Completely forgot about abstraction because as a programmer I absolutely never dealt with this concept ever.... Of course you completely missed the point. All I am saying is that this may not be possible. This is 100% what I am saying. Let me give you a concrete example: A visual recognition algorithm. Currently the way we do this is with a trained neural net. Can a large crack team of humans reproduce the logic of this neural net in a way where it isn't a black box? Perhaps we can use abstraction and subdivide the logic into modular pieces and have different teams of people handle different components.... Currently the second method is not possible. We do not have the ability to subdivide the problem into smaller units of complexity. We do not yet know how to "abstract" components of a neural net. What I am saying is that the "abstraction" part may not ever be possible. It MAY very well be that a neural net of 1000 nodes can only be understood by understanding all 1000 nodes AT THE SAME TIME. It may very well be that you cannot find 200 nodes in the network and give it to a small team to handle and find another 300 nodes to give to another team... Not saying it's impossible in the near or far future. I'm saying I fear it MAY be Impossible. What is impossible is understanding all 1000 nodes at the same time. This is ALL that I am saying. Sheesh. If consciousness is a neural net.... It may suffer from the same problem. Understand? Leave it to the internet to read a comment and take it the wrong way.
Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
Why do people still flock around this argument sometimes, it is so easy to debunk: we already have and are building machines (let's say a complete vechicle, a Tesla Model S) that are already too complex for any individual human to understand all the processes of. There might be engineers who exactly know how a steering works, how the cpu is built, how the chemistry of the tire works, but there is no one who can realistically hold (and operate on) all the knowledge that goes into making such an object. And yet, behold, we are building many of them and they all mostly work, they are functional, stable etc. This is all the type of understanding we need for a brain as well. It already works, why would anyone think that it is impossible?
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  Sigh. My statement of impossibility was understanding the brain understanding the brain as a whole. This is the only part that is IMPOSSIBLE. Your statement of modularizing portions of understanding into pieces to deal with complexity is isomorphic to my statement that we can only hope to understand A representation of the brain as a simplification. The engineers who understand steering Understand the rest of the car as a symbolic representation. The lead designer of the car understands most detailed components of the car as symbolic representations. In short each human as individuals CAN ONLY understand the CAR/BRAIN as a symbolic simplification. This is the BEST possible outcome. What you are SAYING is the EXACT same thing I am SAYING. The one difference is... I am taking it ONE STEP further with a speculation on the nature of intelligence. There exists concepts in this world that are fundamental and cannot be modularized. It is a very reasonable speculation that the understanding of consciousness itself cannot be further modularized or subdivided. I am saying that in order to understand consciousness it may very well be, that we have to understand consciousness as a complex whole and this complexity may be too big for us to hold in our heads. This IS a realistic possibility. We are already seeing the limits to this with the black box nature of the neural nets we are generating. Either way this was a speculation. You (and many others) completely misunderstanding and taking it the wrong way.
  - Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
    If you are simply saying that it is "possible" then I agree with you completely. However from everything I have learned including the neural nets (there is actually quite a lot of insights we can gain from how they work. The myth that they are a blackbox is just that - a myth. There are techniques to understand them and visualizations that explain a lot of what they do) is that your thesis is unlikely, certainly we shouldn't give up at this point at the very least. I simply haven't seen anything that would indicate that it would be impossible to understand consciousness in the same practical mannter as the way we understand for example cars now (ie, at least enough to build one, at which point it can take over). In fact we might not even need to fully understand it (or understand on some deep fundamental concept level that you have mentioned) to be able to reproduce and improve it. > There exists concepts in this world that are fundamental and cannot be modularized. Out of curiosity, what are some of these concepts that you have stumbled upon that you would put in this category (preferably at least somewhat related to building AI or new technology in general)? I am sure there are some but it would be interesting to see specific examples.

schmilk 7y ago

This sounds eerily similar to some of the early proofs of God. I think there may be a flaw in this line of thinking. |Thus humans can never understand the brain because the brain has equal complexity to itself and for the brain to understand the brain then it must have greater complexity than itself which is impossible. We don't need to know the entire state of the brain at any given moment to understand the mechanics of the brain, just as we don't need to know the entire state of every molecule on planet Earth in order to understand it's physics.

crimsonalucard 7y ago
Sigh. My statement of impossibility was understanding the brain understanding the brain as a whole. This is the only part that is IMPOSSIBLE. Your statement of modularizing portions of understanding into pieces to deal with complexity is isomorphic to my statement that we can only hope to understand A representation of the brain as a simplification. The chemists who understand molecules Understand the atom of the as a symbolic representation. The physicist understands the atom in a more detailed manner and sees the molecule as a symbolic representation. In short each human as individuals CAN ONLY understand the BRAIN as a symbolic simplification. This is the BEST possible outcome. What you are SAYING is the EXACT same thing I am SAYING. The one difference is... I am taking it ONE STEP further with a speculation on the nature of intelligence. There exists concepts in this world that are fundamental and cannot be modularized. It is a very reasonable speculation that the understanding of consciousness itself cannot be further modularized or subdivided. I am saying that in order to understand consciousness it may very well be, that we have to understand consciousness as a complex whole and this complexity may be too big for us to hold in our heads. This IS a realistic possibility. We are already seeing the limits to this with the black box nature of the neural nets we are generating. A possible future simulation of Consciousness may very well be encoded in the same blackbox that our deep fakes are also trapped in. Either way this was a speculation. You (and many others) completely misunderstanding and taking it the wrong way.

oscargrouch 7y ago

The problem with your line of reasoning, is that you are thinking in technological progress only through individual achievement. This is what technological iterations, through generations of human beings, give us all. Humans achieve super-human level of technological achievements because we iterate over what others have left for us. Knowledge is like a stair, made from the hard work of many great human beings, and even for hard problems, with enough ammount of iterations, and with consecutive progress (without social deterioration) we can achieve anything. Somebody will fill that "last" step in the stair that will make a paradigm shift to all of us..

Agebor 7y ago
Yes. You might find interesting some very rated ideas as this article - Bayesian Brain. In this view, the brain is a complex system that learns to adapt to and predict its environment, similar to other complex systems like even companies.
crimsonalucard 7y ago
Of course you completely missed the point. All I am saying is that this may not be possible. This is 100% what I am saying. Let me give you a concrete example: A visual recognition algorithm. Currently the way we do this is with a trained neural net. Can a large crack team of humans reproduce the logic of this neural net in a way where it isn't a black box? Perhaps we can use abstraction and subdivide the logic into modular pieces and have different teams of people handle different components.... Or perhaps we have to leave it as a blackbox learning process. Currently there is no way to subdivide the core logic of a neural net into something even A team of humans can understand. The best possible methods we have in handling this complexity is to leave it to an automated process rather than abstracting components of the problem so that humans can understand individual pieces. I AM not saying it will be impossible for humans to ever abstract this problem into something we can understand. I am only saying it MAY be impossible to subdivide, but it is CERTAINLY impossible for a human to understand the brain as a whole. There is the possibility that complex concepts exist in the universe that cannot be understood by breaking it apart into abstract concepts. A neural net has thousands of nodes as touch points and it is highly probable that to understand it you must understand all of the thousands nodes at the SAME TIME. This is a viable possibility. Leave it to the internet to read a comment and take it the wrong way.

sgt101 7y ago

Of course, we could use abstraction and analysis to tackle this...

crimsonalucard 7y ago
Right. I'm on HN. I'm probably a programmer. Completely forgot about abstraction because as a programmer I absolutely never dealt with this concept ever.... Of course you completely missed the point. All I am saying is that this may not be possible. This is 100% what I am saying. Let me give you a concrete example: A visual recognition algorithm. Currently the way we do this is with a trained neural net. Can a large crack team of humans reproduce the logic of this neural net in a way where it isn't a black box? Perhaps we can use abstraction and subdivide the logic into modular pieces and have different teams of people handle different components.... Currently the second method is not possible. We do not have the ability to subdivide the problem into smaller units of complexity. We do not yet know how to "abstract" components of a neural net. What I am saying is that the "abstraction" part may not ever be possible. It MAY very well be that a neural net of 1000 nodes can only be understood by understanding all 1000 nodes AT THE SAME TIME. It may very well be that you cannot find 200 nodes in the network and give it to a small team to handle and find another 300 nodes to give to another team... Not saying it's impossible in the near or far future. I'm saying I fear it MAY be Impossible. What is impossible is understanding all 1000 nodes at the same time. This is ALL that I am saying. Sheesh. If consciousness is a neural net.... It may suffer from the same problem. Understand? Leave it to the internet to read a comment and take it the wrong way.

Erlich_Bachman 7y ago

Why do people still flock around this argument sometimes, it is so easy to debunk: we already have and are building machines (let's say a complete vechicle, a Tesla Model S) that are already too complex for any individual human to understand all the processes of. There might be engineers who exactly know how a steering works, how the cpu is built, how the chemistry of the tire works, but there is no one who can realistically hold (and operate on) all the knowledge that goes into making such an object. And yet, behold, we are building many of them and they all mostly work, they are functional, stable etc. This is all the type of understanding we need for a brain as well. It already works, why would anyone think that it is impossible?

crimsonalucard 7y ago
Sigh. My statement of impossibility was understanding the brain understanding the brain as a whole. This is the only part that is IMPOSSIBLE. Your statement of modularizing portions of understanding into pieces to deal with complexity is isomorphic to my statement that we can only hope to understand A representation of the brain as a simplification. The engineers who understand steering Understand the rest of the car as a symbolic representation. The lead designer of the car understands most detailed components of the car as symbolic representations. In short each human as individuals CAN ONLY understand the CAR/BRAIN as a symbolic simplification. This is the BEST possible outcome. What you are SAYING is the EXACT same thing I am SAYING. The one difference is... I am taking it ONE STEP further with a speculation on the nature of intelligence. There exists concepts in this world that are fundamental and cannot be modularized. It is a very reasonable speculation that the understanding of consciousness itself cannot be further modularized or subdivided. I am saying that in order to understand consciousness it may very well be, that we have to understand consciousness as a complex whole and this complexity may be too big for us to hold in our heads. This IS a realistic possibility. We are already seeing the limits to this with the black box nature of the neural nets we are generating. Either way this was a speculation. You (and many others) completely misunderstanding and taking it the wrong way.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
  If you are simply saying that it is "possible" then I agree with you completely. However from everything I have learned including the neural nets (there is actually quite a lot of insights we can gain from how they work. The myth that they are a blackbox is just that - a myth. There are techniques to understand them and visualizations that explain a lot of what they do) is that your thesis is unlikely, certainly we shouldn't give up at this point at the very least. I simply haven't seen anything that would indicate that it would be impossible to understand consciousness in the same practical mannter as the way we understand for example cars now (ie, at least enough to build one, at which point it can take over). In fact we might not even need to fully understand it (or understand on some deep fundamental concept level that you have mentioned) to be able to reproduce and improve it. > There exists concepts in this world that are fundamental and cannot be modularized. Out of curiosity, what are some of these concepts that you have stumbled upon that you would put in this category (preferably at least somewhat related to building AI or new technology in general)? I am sure there are some but it would be interesting to see specific examples.