5 ms·

If the brain is just bioelectrical hardware then there is nothing worth reverse engineering, nor is there any worth to anything at all. You can simulate digest

If the brain is just bioelectrical hardware then there is nothing worth reverse engineering, nor is there any worth to anything at all. You can simulate digestion with a turing machine all you want, but that simulation wont digest any food. Likewise you can simulate the neurons in a brain but that simulation can not be an instantiation of the concept of triangularity.

jcelerier 7y ago
> If the brain is just bioelectrical hardware then there is nothing worth reverse engineering, nor is there any worth to anything at all. may I introduce you to our local nihilist club
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  If we can make a faster or parallel perfect copy that would be rather valuable - uploading, copying and "fork/join" of minds would be rather useful.
- RashHeuristics 7y ago
  not nihilism, materalistic eliminativism - just happens to have nihilism as a consequence.
vidarh 7y ago
Of course there's something worth reverse engineering, because in that case doing so would allow us to create consciousness as well as transfer and copy it. It would hold the key to at least a form of practical immortality. If the brain is not just bioelectrical hardware, then we have the problem of whatever it might "interface with" can be influenced and copied, and we don't even know if there is anything to interface with and copy. > You can simulate digestion with a turing machine all you want, but that simulation wont digest any food. Likewise you can simulate the neurons in a brain but that simulation can not be an instantiation of the concept of triangularity. This is an utterly meaningless paragraph. If we build a robot we most certainly could build one that actually digests food. To my knowledge we can't yet do so without actually losing energy rather than gaining it, but that is an issue with the efficiency of the engineering, no fundamental blocker. If in software, it wouldn't digest any food, sure, but it also would have no need to, and that has no parallel to the second part of your paragraph. The "concept of triangularity" can certainly be simulated in an abstract manner. It doesn't even take a complex system. AI doing symbolic manipulation of abstract concepts is one of the earliest things we tried. It's not the hard part. The hard part is actually reasoning about those concepts, inferring them, being able to act on them and talk about them. But that too is orthogonal to solving the issue of what consciousness actually is.
- namibj 7y ago
  Afaik we can throw bacteria at it and then use something similar to fuel cells to digest their products. There are already robots that you can feed by placing apple slices at the right location on them. Methane fuel cells driven by methane from anaerobic bacteria is not hard. The digestion is used for a long time in waste water treatment, and the fuel cells are good enough to be useful for a few years now. It's just that those fuel cells are _expensive_, and the system power density is quite meager, all considered. It also lacks an immune system that keeps the bacteria in check, so it's not that hard to poison (still quite resilient though).
- RashHeuristics 7y ago
  No, it would not allow you to create consciousness, it would simply mean that there is no such thing as consciousness. eliminative materialism would be true. there would be no 'you' to live forever. Us not knowing exactly how something works has never stopped us before from looking into it. With "a simulation of digestion" I specifically mean a software simulation, not a hardware simulation. I assure you I had a meaning with the text I wrote, it is not meaningless. The meaning is for me to say, your interpretation of it (and this is the point) underdetermines the meaning of it. You fully determine what i meant simply from the characters on the screen. Physical instantiations of abstract items work the same way. An item needing to do something is irrelevant of it being able to, a software simulation of food does not actually digest food. A software simulation of abstract concepts do not actually instantiate them. I am repeating myself again but any AI system you believe to have instantiated the abstract concept of triangularity is just an interpretation on your part to having done so, you might as well interpret it to simply being a room heating device or the implementation of some other algorithm that also matches the behaviour.
  - vidarh 7y ago
    > No, it would not allow you to create consciousness, it would simply mean that there is no such thing as consciousness. eliminative materialism would be true. there would be no 'you' to live forever. Do you believe you are conscious? I believe I am conscious. If the brain is purely bioelectrical, then a purely bioelectrical system at least is able to reproduce an entity that believes itself to be conscious. Whether there is a meaningful distinction between that and "actual" consciousness is something we simply don't know, because we don't have a way of measuring whether or not another entity actually is conscious, whatever we take that to mean. Maybe that belief that I am conscious is flawed and merely an illusion, but if copying my mind could allow that illusion to persist forever, then my illusion of consciousness would still be quite pleased with that outcome. That is quite enough for me. > I am repeating myself again but any AI system you believe to have instantiated the abstract concept of triangularity is just an interpretation on your part to having done so, you might as well interpret it to simply being a room heating device or the implementation of some other algorithm that also matches the behaviour. Here is an implementation of the abstract concept of triangularity that does not involve an interpretation of what it means or an instantiation of the concept, merely a symbol that describes the abstract concept as it is: thought = :triangularity I define the symbol :triangularity to refer to the abstract concept, so it does. I can manipulate that concept with or without making any interpretation as to what the concept actually means. Symbolic manipulation of abstract ideas is trivially easy. The idea that we can't is ludicrous. The challenge comes when we try to interpret and reason about specific concrete interpretations, not in holding an abstract concept - we've known how to communicate abstract concepts as data without instantiating an interpretation since at least the moment we could write. You're attacking AI on the basis of one of the problems that are easiest to solve. Symbolic manipulation of abstract concepts with computers in a meaningful form dates back to at least the 50's. The ease with which we can do that was part of much of the early misguided hope of a rapid revolution in general artificial intelligence.
kaiabwpdjqn 7y ago
> You can simulate digestion with a turing machine all you want, but that simulation wont digest any food. You could digest simulated food. You could also build a machine stomach to digest real food. If you found out you were a simulation you’d be looking pretty dumb right now
Psyladine 7y ago
> then there is nothing worth reverse engineering, nor is there any worth to anything at all. Non-sequitor. You are certain to die, so there's no point in continued breathing?
- RashHeuristics 7y ago
  It is not a non-sequitor, it follows from the concepts, something being worth doing is not a part of physics/math. If math/physics is all you have then you have no "worth doing".
  - vidarh 7y ago
    If it turns out we're just simulated entities, does that suddenly make your life not worth living? Why would it change anything?
    - RashHeuristics 7y ago
      if we are simulated entities then there is no "we". 'we' do not have existence. that would indeed make life not worth living, on account of there not being a life there in the first place
      - vidarh 7y ago
        If we are simulated entities, then the fact that I at least live a pleasant life would show that it is perfectly possible to have a pleasant, worthwhile simulated life.
        RashHeuristics 7y ago
        no it would show that you are not simulated
    - c22 7y ago
      It might, if it turns out there's an opportunity for a reset.
alpaca128 7y ago
> You can simulate digestion with a turing machine all you want, but that simulation wont digest any food. Because food is a physical item. Ideas and abstract concepts are not and can be communicated in a format that's fully compatible with a simulated consciousness. There is no reason that wouldn't be possible aside from mechanisms that are, or at least appear, supernatural.

jcelerier 7y ago

> If the brain is just bioelectrical hardware then there is nothing worth reverse engineering, nor is there any worth to anything at all. may I introduce you to our local nihilist club

AstralStorm 7y ago
If we can make a faster or parallel perfect copy that would be rather valuable - uploading, copying and "fork/join" of minds would be rather useful.
RashHeuristics 7y ago
not nihilism, materalistic eliminativism - just happens to have nihilism as a consequence.

vidarh 7y ago

Of course there's something worth reverse engineering, because in that case doing so would allow us to create consciousness as well as transfer and copy it. It would hold the key to at least a form of practical immortality. If the brain is not just bioelectrical hardware, then we have the problem of whatever it might "interface with" can be influenced and copied, and we don't even know if there is anything to interface with and copy. > You can simulate digestion with a turing machine all you want, but that simulation wont digest any food. Likewise you can simulate the neurons in a brain but that simulation can not be an instantiation of the concept of triangularity. This is an utterly meaningless paragraph. If we build a robot we most certainly could build one that actually digests food. To my knowledge we can't yet do so without actually losing energy rather than gaining it, but that is an issue with the efficiency of the engineering, no fundamental blocker. If in software, it wouldn't digest any food, sure, but it also would have no need to, and that has no parallel to the second part of your paragraph. The "concept of triangularity" can certainly be simulated in an abstract manner. It doesn't even take a complex system. AI doing symbolic manipulation of abstract concepts is one of the earliest things we tried. It's not the hard part. The hard part is actually reasoning about those concepts, inferring them, being able to act on them and talk about them. But that too is orthogonal to solving the issue of what consciousness actually is.

namibj 7y ago
Afaik we can throw bacteria at it and then use something similar to fuel cells to digest their products. There are already robots that you can feed by placing apple slices at the right location on them. Methane fuel cells driven by methane from anaerobic bacteria is not hard. The digestion is used for a long time in waste water treatment, and the fuel cells are good enough to be useful for a few years now. It's just that those fuel cells are _expensive_, and the system power density is quite meager, all considered. It also lacks an immune system that keeps the bacteria in check, so it's not that hard to poison (still quite resilient though).
RashHeuristics 7y ago
No, it would not allow you to create consciousness, it would simply mean that there is no such thing as consciousness. eliminative materialism would be true. there would be no 'you' to live forever. Us not knowing exactly how something works has never stopped us before from looking into it. With "a simulation of digestion" I specifically mean a software simulation, not a hardware simulation. I assure you I had a meaning with the text I wrote, it is not meaningless. The meaning is for me to say, your interpretation of it (and this is the point) underdetermines the meaning of it. You fully determine what i meant simply from the characters on the screen. Physical instantiations of abstract items work the same way. An item needing to do something is irrelevant of it being able to, a software simulation of food does not actually digest food. A software simulation of abstract concepts do not actually instantiate them. I am repeating myself again but any AI system you believe to have instantiated the abstract concept of triangularity is just an interpretation on your part to having done so, you might as well interpret it to simply being a room heating device or the implementation of some other algorithm that also matches the behaviour.
- vidarh 7y ago
  > No, it would not allow you to create consciousness, it would simply mean that there is no such thing as consciousness. eliminative materialism would be true. there would be no 'you' to live forever. Do you believe you are conscious? I believe I am conscious. If the brain is purely bioelectrical, then a purely bioelectrical system at least is able to reproduce an entity that believes itself to be conscious. Whether there is a meaningful distinction between that and "actual" consciousness is something we simply don't know, because we don't have a way of measuring whether or not another entity actually is conscious, whatever we take that to mean. Maybe that belief that I am conscious is flawed and merely an illusion, but if copying my mind could allow that illusion to persist forever, then my illusion of consciousness would still be quite pleased with that outcome. That is quite enough for me. > I am repeating myself again but any AI system you believe to have instantiated the abstract concept of triangularity is just an interpretation on your part to having done so, you might as well interpret it to simply being a room heating device or the implementation of some other algorithm that also matches the behaviour. Here is an implementation of the abstract concept of triangularity that does not involve an interpretation of what it means or an instantiation of the concept, merely a symbol that describes the abstract concept as it is: thought = :triangularity I define the symbol :triangularity to refer to the abstract concept, so it does. I can manipulate that concept with or without making any interpretation as to what the concept actually means. Symbolic manipulation of abstract ideas is trivially easy. The idea that we can't is ludicrous. The challenge comes when we try to interpret and reason about specific concrete interpretations, not in holding an abstract concept - we've known how to communicate abstract concepts as data without instantiating an interpretation since at least the moment we could write. You're attacking AI on the basis of one of the problems that are easiest to solve. Symbolic manipulation of abstract concepts with computers in a meaningful form dates back to at least the 50's. The ease with which we can do that was part of much of the early misguided hope of a rapid revolution in general artificial intelligence.

kaiabwpdjqn 7y ago

> You can simulate digestion with a turing machine all you want, but that simulation wont digest any food. You could digest simulated food. You could also build a machine stomach to digest real food. If you found out you were a simulation you’d be looking pretty dumb right now

Psyladine 7y ago

> then there is nothing worth reverse engineering, nor is there any worth to anything at all. Non-sequitor. You are certain to die, so there's no point in continued breathing?

RashHeuristics 7y ago
It is not a non-sequitor, it follows from the concepts, something being worth doing is not a part of physics/math. If math/physics is all you have then you have no "worth doing".
- vidarh 7y ago
  If it turns out we're just simulated entities, does that suddenly make your life not worth living? Why would it change anything?
  - RashHeuristics 7y ago
    if we are simulated entities then there is no "we". 'we' do not have existence. that would indeed make life not worth living, on account of there not being a life there in the first place
    - vidarh 7y ago
      If we are simulated entities, then the fact that I at least live a pleasant life would show that it is perfectly possible to have a pleasant, worthwhile simulated life.
      - RashHeuristics 7y ago
        no it would show that you are not simulated
  - c22 7y ago
    It might, if it turns out there's an opportunity for a reset.

alpaca128 7y ago

> You can simulate digestion with a turing machine all you want, but that simulation wont digest any food. Because food is a physical item. Ideas and abstract concepts are not and can be communicated in a format that's fully compatible with a simulated consciousness. There is no reason that wouldn't be possible aside from mechanisms that are, or at least appear, supernatural.