9 ms·

Why have so many hypotheses failed when it comes to the mind? We understand quantum scale effects and measure and predict them to 17 decimals places of precisio

by meroes 6y ago

Why have so many hypotheses failed when it comes to the mind? We understand quantum scale effects and measure and predict them to 17 decimals places of precision. How can we not know what is going on in the brain? We know what is going on in supercolliders when trillions of particles scatter (we only capture a tiny fraction of the data but still we know all the mechanisms available to the standard model). Surely we can track any and every physical mechanism in the brain "accessible" to consciousness to build itself up from assuming it is physical. How can we still not take that set of physical mechanisms and build a lasting model of consciousness. I have a personal bet that no progress will be made on consciousness in my lifetime. Maybe one of the theories we have is correct and we just can't test it correctly. I could easily be wrong. But it seems like we lack the imagination, not the technical ability, to find the answer. And not much has changed from my outside perspective in 30 years. Look, I'm genuinely puzzled by science's inability to have a working model of consciousness. I'm not asking rhetorically why we have no lasting models, I don't know what the reason could be. To me these are even more "woo" than string theory which gets lambasted around the popular alt big-science channels.

aeternum 6y ago
We can't even model most two-element chemical systems using QM as the state space just becomes too complex. Having a model does not mean you can necessarily run the computations to sufficient accuracy to make good predictions. Even with something as well-understood as gravity, N-body problems are still quite difficult and calculations must be numerically approximated. This method works fine for most systems but diverges rapidly if a chaotic perturbation is present.
- kbelder 6y ago
  And intelligence seems to be specifically driven by chaotic processes, built to amplify small signals until they cascade. A few different photons impinging on an eye can completely change the state of the brain a few seconds later.
  - noisy_boy 6y ago
    I have noticed that specifics scents have a pretty huge impact on the state of mind; memories and feeling come almost like an overwhelming flood.
    - aeternum 6y ago
      This is because the sense of smell bypasses the thalamus (router for all other senses) and is located deep in the lymbic system, very close to the hippocampus and amygdala which process memories.
jgust 6y ago
IANA neuroscientist but I suspect it's a measurement problem. The structures of the brain are microscopic and enormous in scale, so how do you capture all that data and make sense of it?
- asdff 6y ago
  Not to mention, the minute you open up the brain the situation is entirely different than when things were functioning in state. It's like figuring out how a functional car works by analyzing a bag of seemingly random parts and loose scrap metal. Biology is difficult science.
hypertele-Xii 6y ago
Well, the OpenWorm project [1] estimates to be about 20-30% into simulating the 302 neurons and 95 muscle cells of Caenorhabditis elegans. The human brain has over 86000000000 neurons (about 300 million times more than the worm). I'd say we're about 0% into simulating (thus understanding) that. Mind you previous generation computers (32-bit) couldn't even count that high. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm
- kbelder 6y ago
  An idle thought... are there any professional ethics standards that control treatment of the Caenorhabditis elegans worm, like there are higher animals? Or (I expect) is it considered simple enough that concerns of animal cruelty don't apply? I wonder, because if there were, such standards should apply to the simulated copy of the worm's mind, as well.
  - azernik 6y ago
    Looking this up - apparently in most jurisdictions animal welfare/ethics standards only apply to vertebrates and cephalopods. If it's an invertebrate and isn't in the smarter category of squids and octopodes and the like, it's open season.
    - guerrilla 6y ago
      Ummmm how did arthropods get left out?
  - IngoBlechschmid 6y ago
    Relevant qntm.org short story about "MMAcevedo, also known as Miguel, [...] the earliest executable image of a human brain": https://qntm.org/lena https://qntm.org/lena
  - hntrader 6y ago
    "should apply" It depends on whether the simulation itself is conscious, which is an open question in the philosophy of mind (is our wetware the only feasible substrate?) with much debate. If the answer is no, it's therefore not capable of suffering and not worthy of ethical concern, but as of yet we don't know the answer. We may of course wish to assume that it is conscious, just for the sake of risk aversion.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
We can’t ethically do the tests needed.
chillfox 6y ago
It could just be that it requires scale. Some science projects just can't be done by small research teams. You mention our understanding of physics. That understanding only got pinned down and refined by spending billions on large research projects. The only brain related research project I know off that has a budget even close to what we routinely spend on physics is the Human Brain Project [1], and that only started in 2013. It's not expected to be complete until 2023 and even then it is only laying the foundation for more ambitious projects to build on. [1] https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/ https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/
thelamest 6y ago
>Surely we can track any and every physical mechanism in the brain "accessible" to consciousness To add to other replies, there's a gap in our ability to measure these mechanisms. We can see the big picture with bad resolution (e.g. lesion studies, EEG, fMRI), or take tiny keyhole peeps with somewhat better resolution (e.g. single-neuron recording or MEAs). Moreover, each of these methods gives us just a narrow kind of indirect data (e.g. blood oxygenation, or electric activity at few synapses) out of a rich functional context. They are amazing but perhaps still far too limited to inform truly detailed models and understanding.
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  Right, we would have to measure perhaps most of the neurons in a living brain at the same time to understand what is going on. Building an artificial brain made of billions of artificial neurons and of synapses is a worthy goal but it could be like building a working computer. Having a computer does not tell us what is running in the computer. Software is the ghost in the machine. We don't want to simulate neurons and synapses, we want to simulate the programs that are running in actual brains. But what are they? And how could we find that out?
taneq 6y ago
Because what those particles in a supercollider are doing is way simpler than what a neuron is doing, let alone a brain full of neurons. It's like the way you can simulate and predict billiard balls but if you take the billiard table apart and build a Turing machine out of the parts, suddenly all bets are off. I believe we'll finally figure out some 'Maxwell's Equations of Consciousness', stare at them for a while, then collectively say 'ah crap' because seeing the maths doesn't equate to understanding what it means.
ummwhat 6y ago
What does it mean to "understand something"? Why don't we consider "big lump of axons and dendrons" to be an understanding? To me at least, understanding is quantified by the difference between the number of bits in your model and the number of bits in the thing you want to understand. "True understanding" is when you've gotten the model down to a small enough size that you can fit it in your head. But there is no a priori law that everything interesting in the universe should be able to fit in your head. We've just been lucky so far. Maybe we will keep making progress understanding how consciousness works, but never shrink it down far enough that we are satisfied with the "explanation".
- plutonorm 6y ago
  I agree. This is the only definition that matters. People are confused because the language we use to talk about this stuff is full of assumptions and misunderstandings that leak into their logical reasoning. Imho, compression is a perfectly adequate description of intelligence. This is why GPT-3 does so well, intelligence is an emergent property of predictive power. Marcus Hutter really needs to rejig his compression challenge to allow much larger models, it could really be relevant to judging progress.

by meroes 6y ago

aeternum 6y ago

We can't even model most two-element chemical systems using QM as the state space just becomes too complex. Having a model does not mean you can necessarily run the computations to sufficient accuracy to make good predictions. Even with something as well-understood as gravity, N-body problems are still quite difficult and calculations must be numerically approximated. This method works fine for most systems but diverges rapidly if a chaotic perturbation is present.

kbelder 6y ago
And intelligence seems to be specifically driven by chaotic processes, built to amplify small signals until they cascade. A few different photons impinging on an eye can completely change the state of the brain a few seconds later.
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  I have noticed that specifics scents have a pretty huge impact on the state of mind; memories and feeling come almost like an overwhelming flood.
  - aeternum 6y ago
    This is because the sense of smell bypasses the thalamus (router for all other senses) and is located deep in the lymbic system, very close to the hippocampus and amygdala which process memories.

jgust 6y ago

IANA neuroscientist but I suspect it's a measurement problem. The structures of the brain are microscopic and enormous in scale, so how do you capture all that data and make sense of it?

asdff 6y ago
Not to mention, the minute you open up the brain the situation is entirely different than when things were functioning in state. It's like figuring out how a functional car works by analyzing a bag of seemingly random parts and loose scrap metal. Biology is difficult science.

hypertele-Xii 6y ago

Well, the OpenWorm project [1] estimates to be about 20-30% into simulating the 302 neurons and 95 muscle cells of Caenorhabditis elegans. The human brain has over 86000000000 neurons (about 300 million times more than the worm). I'd say we're about 0% into simulating (thus understanding) that. Mind you previous generation computers (32-bit) couldn't even count that high. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm

kbelder 6y ago
An idle thought... are there any professional ethics standards that control treatment of the Caenorhabditis elegans worm, like there are higher animals? Or (I expect) is it considered simple enough that concerns of animal cruelty don't apply? I wonder, because if there were, such standards should apply to the simulated copy of the worm's mind, as well.
- azernik 6y ago
  Looking this up - apparently in most jurisdictions animal welfare/ethics standards only apply to vertebrates and cephalopods. If it's an invertebrate and isn't in the smarter category of squids and octopodes and the like, it's open season.
  - guerrilla 6y ago
    Ummmm how did arthropods get left out?
- IngoBlechschmid 6y ago
  Relevant qntm.org short story about "MMAcevedo, also known as Miguel, [...] the earliest executable image of a human brain": https://qntm.org/lena https://qntm.org/lena
- hntrader 6y ago
  "should apply" It depends on whether the simulation itself is conscious, which is an open question in the philosophy of mind (is our wetware the only feasible substrate?) with much debate. If the answer is no, it's therefore not capable of suffering and not worthy of ethical concern, but as of yet we don't know the answer. We may of course wish to assume that it is conscious, just for the sake of risk aversion.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

We can’t ethically do the tests needed.

chillfox 6y ago

It could just be that it requires scale. Some science projects just can't be done by small research teams. You mention our understanding of physics. That understanding only got pinned down and refined by spending billions on large research projects. The only brain related research project I know off that has a budget even close to what we routinely spend on physics is the Human Brain Project [1], and that only started in 2013. It's not expected to be complete until 2023 and even then it is only laying the foundation for more ambitious projects to build on. [1] https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/ https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/

thelamest 6y ago

>Surely we can track any and every physical mechanism in the brain "accessible" to consciousness To add to other replies, there's a gap in our ability to measure these mechanisms. We can see the big picture with bad resolution (e.g. lesion studies, EEG, fMRI), or take tiny keyhole peeps with somewhat better resolution (e.g. single-neuron recording or MEAs). Moreover, each of these methods gives us just a narrow kind of indirect data (e.g. blood oxygenation, or electric activity at few synapses) out of a rich functional context. They are amazing but perhaps still far too limited to inform truly detailed models and understanding.

galaxyLogic 6y ago
Right, we would have to measure perhaps most of the neurons in a living brain at the same time to understand what is going on. Building an artificial brain made of billions of artificial neurons and of synapses is a worthy goal but it could be like building a working computer. Having a computer does not tell us what is running in the computer. Software is the ghost in the machine. We don't want to simulate neurons and synapses, we want to simulate the programs that are running in actual brains. But what are they? And how could we find that out?

taneq 6y ago

Because what those particles in a supercollider are doing is way simpler than what a neuron is doing, let alone a brain full of neurons. It's like the way you can simulate and predict billiard balls but if you take the billiard table apart and build a Turing machine out of the parts, suddenly all bets are off. I believe we'll finally figure out some 'Maxwell's Equations of Consciousness', stare at them for a while, then collectively say 'ah crap' because seeing the maths doesn't equate to understanding what it means.

ummwhat 6y ago

What does it mean to "understand something"? Why don't we consider "big lump of axons and dendrons" to be an understanding? To me at least, understanding is quantified by the difference between the number of bits in your model and the number of bits in the thing you want to understand. "True understanding" is when you've gotten the model down to a small enough size that you can fit it in your head. But there is no a priori law that everything interesting in the universe should be able to fit in your head. We've just been lucky so far. Maybe we will keep making progress understanding how consciousness works, but never shrink it down far enough that we are satisfied with the "explanation".

plutonorm 6y ago
I agree. This is the only definition that matters. People are confused because the language we use to talk about this stuff is full of assumptions and misunderstandings that leak into their logical reasoning. Imho, compression is a perfectly adequate description of intelligence. This is why GPT-3 does so well, intelligence is an emergent property of predictive power. Marcus Hutter really needs to rejig his compression challenge to allow much larger models, it could really be relevant to judging progress.