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Let's be clear on at least one thing: they're building a simulation of the physical brain hardware. At least according to the article, there is no goal to simul

Let's be clear on at least one thing: they're building a simulation of the physical brain hardware. At least according to the article, there is no goal to simulate human consciousness.

rauljara 15y ago
In what way do you think human consciousness is detached from the physical operation of the brain?
- yread 15y ago
  Instincts, growing up, human experience. It's the software that makes us (in this case some preconfigured parameters and training data), the hardware is going to be dumb
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    A large portion of our instincts are hard-wired. What about a sadly-not-too-hypothetical case of a child being raised in total isolation? Do they not possess consciousness?
    - apl 15y ago
      > A large portion of our instincts are hard-wired. Not accurate, or at least misleading. There's a lot of plasticity in the brain even at the very basic levels. Raising a kitten in an atypical environment (e.g., without edges or contrast), for instance, yields profound functional differences from retinal ganglion cells over V1/V2 up to the dorsal and ventral streams of the visual system. We are what we are because our brains are hard-wired to adapt to typical environments. Full isolation would cause substantial aberrations -- that's exactly what you observe in real-world cases.
  - EricBerglund 15y ago
    What do "software" and "hardware" even mean in the context of the brain? All of what you call "software" is just the result of combinations of neuron patterns and chemicals, all of which could be included in a simulation.
    - Locke1689 15y ago
      Could and will are two completely separate things. As I said there is no research effort included in this project to attempt to discover those inputs.
- lwat 15y ago
  The ghost in the shell
- Locke1689 15y ago
  Software.
gojomo 15y ago
If we simulate a physical brain, and then it talks to us and says, "Consciousness? Yes, I understand what you mean, I feel that too," is there a distinction to be clear about?
- Locke1689 15y ago
  If you simulate a physical brain, but give it no input, what is the output? Consciousness? Look, fundamentally we've had "human brain hardware" for years now. A Turing machine is a Turing machine is a Turing machine. If you know the mathematical formula for emergent consciousness, there are a bunch of people who would be excited to talk to you.
  - gojomo 15y ago
    Why assume it gets no input? (Why build it if not to interact with it?) A grown, working brain has been shaped by its input – changing the connections, the chemical balances, and other things we don't yet understand (but someday will). So when talking about a 'simulated brain', I think an embedded history of meaningful input, and continued interaction, is implied. (Also, creating such a brain and then depriving it input might be torture, as with extended sensory deprivation in natural humans.)
    - Locke1689 15y ago
      You seem to be unduly assuming emergent behavior. First, we do not know how to completely mirror a human neural network. Second, even if we did we don't know how the initial input affects emergent intelligence. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I am saying that you're taking a rather unscientific leap of faith.
      - gojomo 15y ago
        I'm not assuming anything about what's possible. I take issue with your assumption that there is some 'clear' distinction between the goal of '"building a simulation of the physical brain hardware" and the 'goal to simulate human consciousness". A distinction, if any, between those goals is anything but clear. Further, the people most interested in 'physical simulation' also tend to be 'materialists' who think a suitably precise simulation can reproduce everything interesting about a human mind, including 'consciousness'. Without any personal 'leap of faith' as to whether that's true or false, this is an interesting and deeply murky question.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
What if human consciousness is an emergent property of physical brain hardware? edit, s/emergency/emergent
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  That will be an interesting outcome. What if it's not? Can you imagine how weird it would be if we backed into proving a universal consciousness existed in a different dimension and an exactly modelled/simulated brain didn't get to participate because it wasn't given a 'soul' by that consciousness? Or the flip side where our brain model does develop sentience as an emergent property and the spiritualists have to deal with the possibility that they are just animated meat. Or the creepy side where you take an imprint of your current brain state, impart it on the model and suddenly the model thinks it's you? Science fiction has explored these concepts for a while. I know that personally I'd like there to be something "special" about consciousness and/or sentience but I am rational enough to know that this isn't backed up by solid reasoning, just wishful thinking. In a highly networked, highly automated, world the idea that consciousness could simply 'emerge' from a sufficiently constructed system is deeply disturbing. While much of what the film "Eagle Eye" speculated on with a sentient computer connected to everything seemed pretty bogus, the ability to disrupt and render unusable a wide range of systems simulataneously by a disgruntled AI is not an experience I would anticipate as being 'pleasant.'
ignifero 15y ago
Indeed. There is a huge distance to go before we can simulate things like actual thinking brains. The blue brain proejct and the proposed project use compartmental models, that essentially break down neurons to equivalent electrical circuits. These are plausible models of neurons, but there are many pieces of the biological puzzle that are elusive or highly hypothetical in these, like plasticity, brain rhythms etc. It's not the first time someone attempts to replicate a "whole brain"; somebody used Izhikevich simplified models to simulate a cat brain (Markram had a very public spat with them) a few years ago. Those results were not very revealing - they did notice some brain waves but nothing like an indifferent catish thought. That said, this project needs to go forward. It's the LHC of computational neuroscience. It can be completed much faster, though, all we need is computers, lots of them.
eschulte 15y ago
Your consciousness is your brain hardware. The software exists in the neuronal connections and weights (both of which change over the course of your lifetime), and if these are taken from a real brain (presumably the brain that's been sliced and scanned) then the resulting simulation will be conscious. Specifically the consciousness of the dead person whose brain was used as the model for the simulation. That is unless you are not a materialist, i.e., you believe that the mind is the product of some non-physical plane that somehow interacts with the physical world through the brain...
- Alex3917 15y ago
  "That is unless you are not a materialist, i.e., you believe that the mind is the product of some non-physical plane that somehow interacts with the physical world through the brain..." Is there any good arguments in favor of materialism? It's always struck me as a completely ridiculous position.
  - babblefrog 15y ago
    To me, the best argument would be that everything else that we have looked at in the universe appears to be completely materialistic. Do you know some reason why the brain might be different?
    - hasenj 15y ago
      This subject is just too philosophical for a HN comment, but I think there are at least a few problems with this argument. First of all, almost by definition, we can't really look at anything that's not materialistic; it's just a limitation. For instance, there's no way to prove or disprove the existence of awareness in something or someone. If a robot walks like humans, looks like humans, is it a human? Does it experience anything? Do insects have consciousness? Do animals have it? Does anyone besides me have it? Who says even I have it? How can we test for it? Can we even define it? Who says that my computer mouse doesn't have it? Second, I believe that we only know a tiny fraction of what's out there, or of what's there to know, so it's hard to say that there's nothing beyond matter. And who even says that everything we looked at is materialistic? Is time materialistic? Can it be made from something else? Third, there's nothing materialistic about awareness. It's not as though we can say "it's like a computer program, just more complicated". We can't say that emotions are like variables that control the behavior of a program. Do you know any reason why awareness might be materialistic?
swah 15y ago
Why was this downvoted? (BTW, how many downvotes make the submission gray?)
Locke1689 15y ago
I really have no idea why I was downvoted for this: everything I said was factual in nature. It is an open question on whether or not we know how to create software that has the emergent property of consciousness.

Let's be clear on at least one thing: they're building a simulation of the physical brain hardware. At least according to the article, there is no goal to simulate human consciousness.

rauljara 15y ago

In what way do you think human consciousness is detached from the physical operation of the brain?

yread 15y ago
Instincts, growing up, human experience. It's the software that makes us (in this case some preconfigured parameters and training data), the hardware is going to be dumb
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  A large portion of our instincts are hard-wired. What about a sadly-not-too-hypothetical case of a child being raised in total isolation? Do they not possess consciousness?
  - apl 15y ago
    > A large portion of our instincts are hard-wired. Not accurate, or at least misleading. There's a lot of plasticity in the brain even at the very basic levels. Raising a kitten in an atypical environment (e.g., without edges or contrast), for instance, yields profound functional differences from retinal ganglion cells over V1/V2 up to the dorsal and ventral streams of the visual system. We are what we are because our brains are hard-wired to adapt to typical environments. Full isolation would cause substantial aberrations -- that's exactly what you observe in real-world cases.
- EricBerglund 15y ago
  What do "software" and "hardware" even mean in the context of the brain? All of what you call "software" is just the result of combinations of neuron patterns and chemicals, all of which could be included in a simulation.
  - Locke1689 15y ago
    Could and will are two completely separate things. As I said there is no research effort included in this project to attempt to discover those inputs.
lwat 15y ago
The ghost in the shell
Locke1689 15y ago
Software.

gojomo 15y ago

If we simulate a physical brain, and then it talks to us and says, "Consciousness? Yes, I understand what you mean, I feel that too," is there a distinction to be clear about?

Locke1689 15y ago
If you simulate a physical brain, but give it no input, what is the output? Consciousness? Look, fundamentally we've had "human brain hardware" for years now. A Turing machine is a Turing machine is a Turing machine. If you know the mathematical formula for emergent consciousness, there are a bunch of people who would be excited to talk to you.
- gojomo 15y ago
  Why assume it gets no input? (Why build it if not to interact with it?) A grown, working brain has been shaped by its input – changing the connections, the chemical balances, and other things we don't yet understand (but someday will). So when talking about a 'simulated brain', I think an embedded history of meaningful input, and continued interaction, is implied. (Also, creating such a brain and then depriving it input might be torture, as with extended sensory deprivation in natural humans.)
  - Locke1689 15y ago
    You seem to be unduly assuming emergent behavior. First, we do not know how to completely mirror a human neural network. Second, even if we did we don't know how the initial input affects emergent intelligence. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I am saying that you're taking a rather unscientific leap of faith.
    - gojomo 15y ago
      I'm not assuming anything about what's possible. I take issue with your assumption that there is some 'clear' distinction between the goal of '"building a simulation of the physical brain hardware" and the 'goal to simulate human consciousness". A distinction, if any, between those goals is anything but clear. Further, the people most interested in 'physical simulation' also tend to be 'materialists' who think a suitably precise simulation can reproduce everything interesting about a human mind, including 'consciousness'. Without any personal 'leap of faith' as to whether that's true or false, this is an interesting and deeply murky question.

pavel_lishin 15y ago

What if human consciousness is an emergent property of physical brain hardware? edit, s/emergency/emergent

ChuckMcM 15y ago
That will be an interesting outcome. What if it's not? Can you imagine how weird it would be if we backed into proving a universal consciousness existed in a different dimension and an exactly modelled/simulated brain didn't get to participate because it wasn't given a 'soul' by that consciousness? Or the flip side where our brain model does develop sentience as an emergent property and the spiritualists have to deal with the possibility that they are just animated meat. Or the creepy side where you take an imprint of your current brain state, impart it on the model and suddenly the model thinks it's you? Science fiction has explored these concepts for a while. I know that personally I'd like there to be something "special" about consciousness and/or sentience but I am rational enough to know that this isn't backed up by solid reasoning, just wishful thinking. In a highly networked, highly automated, world the idea that consciousness could simply 'emerge' from a sufficiently constructed system is deeply disturbing. While much of what the film "Eagle Eye" speculated on with a sentient computer connected to everything seemed pretty bogus, the ability to disrupt and render unusable a wide range of systems simulataneously by a disgruntled AI is not an experience I would anticipate as being 'pleasant.'

ignifero 15y ago

Indeed. There is a huge distance to go before we can simulate things like actual thinking brains. The blue brain proejct and the proposed project use compartmental models, that essentially break down neurons to equivalent electrical circuits. These are plausible models of neurons, but there are many pieces of the biological puzzle that are elusive or highly hypothetical in these, like plasticity, brain rhythms etc. It's not the first time someone attempts to replicate a "whole brain"; somebody used Izhikevich simplified models to simulate a cat brain (Markram had a very public spat with them) a few years ago. Those results were not very revealing - they did notice some brain waves but nothing like an indifferent catish thought. That said, this project needs to go forward. It's the LHC of computational neuroscience. It can be completed much faster, though, all we need is computers, lots of them.

eschulte 15y ago

Your consciousness is your brain hardware. The software exists in the neuronal connections and weights (both of which change over the course of your lifetime), and if these are taken from a real brain (presumably the brain that's been sliced and scanned) then the resulting simulation will be conscious. Specifically the consciousness of the dead person whose brain was used as the model for the simulation. That is unless you are not a materialist, i.e., you believe that the mind is the product of some non-physical plane that somehow interacts with the physical world through the brain...

Alex3917 15y ago
"That is unless you are not a materialist, i.e., you believe that the mind is the product of some non-physical plane that somehow interacts with the physical world through the brain..." Is there any good arguments in favor of materialism? It's always struck me as a completely ridiculous position.
- babblefrog 15y ago
  To me, the best argument would be that everything else that we have looked at in the universe appears to be completely materialistic. Do you know some reason why the brain might be different?
  - hasenj 15y ago
    This subject is just too philosophical for a HN comment, but I think there are at least a few problems with this argument. First of all, almost by definition, we can't really look at anything that's not materialistic; it's just a limitation. For instance, there's no way to prove or disprove the existence of awareness in something or someone. If a robot walks like humans, looks like humans, is it a human? Does it experience anything? Do insects have consciousness? Do animals have it? Does anyone besides me have it? Who says even I have it? How can we test for it? Can we even define it? Who says that my computer mouse doesn't have it? Second, I believe that we only know a tiny fraction of what's out there, or of what's there to know, so it's hard to say that there's nothing beyond matter. And who even says that everything we looked at is materialistic? Is time materialistic? Can it be made from something else? Third, there's nothing materialistic about awareness. It's not as though we can say "it's like a computer program, just more complicated". We can't say that emotions are like variables that control the behavior of a program. Do you know any reason why awareness might be materialistic?

swah 15y ago

Why was this downvoted? (BTW, how many downvotes make the submission gray?)

Locke1689 15y ago

I really have no idea why I was downvoted for this: everything I said was factual in nature. It is an open question on whether or not we know how to create software that has the emergent property of consciousness.