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If you were to look at how a computers' memory is organized, a rough, non-programmer idea of how it would map wouldn't be correct. Big visible things like windo

If you were to look at how a computers' memory is organized, a rough, non-programmer idea of how it would map wouldn't be correct. Big visible things like windows or the start menu aren't put in a single place, etc. It seems like remarkable that people don't want to imagine there are the rough equivalent of many, many software layers between the level of the neuron and the level of "reason", "emotions", "self", "consciousness" and etc. I think this comes because the "sense of self" is a process that reflexively takes you as primary and indivisible. A framework that view this as generated by lower process violates this.

PeterisP 5y ago
This reminds me of this nice paper (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/055624v2.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/055624v2.full.pdf) "Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?" exploring the (nonsensical) results we would get if we'd apply currently used neuroscience approaches to analyze an Atari console running a simple game.
radicaldreamer 5y ago
Similarly, there may be a layer below neurons -- microtubules. Something that many neuroscientists and AI researchers don't want to consider seriously, primarily because we're very limited in our ability to examine, interact, and model that layer. It also throws off by orders of magnitude the effort which would be required to fully model an organism neural behavior.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  There may be that layer, but is there evidence for that layer, and I'm not talking about that certain physicists hypothesis about microtubules and free will.
  - zone411 5y ago
    There is evidence that each neuron performs calculations equivalent to a small neural net: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0896627321005018?dgcid=coauthor https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08966....
  - Zuider 5y ago
    Sir Roger Penrose was investigating non-computability versus computability in brain behavior. I am not sure he even mentions free will. This highlights some of the unfortunate tensions in this debate, where people may feel obliged to hold to a literal materialism along with a computational theory of mind, and vigorously shoot down anything that threatens to unsettle that somewhat dogmatic position, for fear of strengthening the position of fundamentalist religious believers. In short, it is primarily a political sentiment, not a scientific one. We should be able to follow where evidence and rational argument leads without being held hostage to such concerns which are strictly irrelevant to the debate.
moonchrome 5y ago
>Big visible things like windows or the start menu aren't put in a single place, etc. Sure they are - in fact it's rendered to linear memory blocks of pixels.
- jvanderbot 5y ago
  OK, let's strain this analogy even more! In memory, sure, the image is in a block (although not really, it's composited (not composted) then shipped over a wire). But the functionality is basically everywhere. Similar in minds. We can see images "trip" localized circuits when they are recognized, but the comprehension and processing of the scene is muuuuuch more complicated. Similarly, where is the little 8bit block that handles a click on the start button, and why God Almighty is it so _far_ from the start button image!
  - waterhouse 5y ago
    > it's composted (This is an amusing idea, but I think "composited" was the word.)
    - jvanderbot 5y ago
      Ha! Thank you
mabub24 5y ago
Or, you know, the analogy of brain as a computer with computerlike memory management simply might not be 100% useful all the time. > people don't want to imagine there are the rough equivalent of many, many software layers between the level of the neuron and the level of "reason", "emotions", "self", "consciousness" and etc It's not that people don't want to imagine, it's that you don't need to imagine that. You don't need to force how the brain functions into the model of a modern computer, though it might simplify and be popular. It's often a helpful analogy/metaphor, and for people that know a lot about computers it often allows them to prognosticate and theorize using elaborate analogies built on top of more analogies, but it's equally helpful to not insist that the thing must be the analogy. For instance, when I talk to a good friend who is a neuroscientist and active in the development of prosthetics with neural interfaces he is far more skeptical (healthily though) of the computational model than any person I speak to in software engineering or the tech industry more broadly. That's likely because the analogy and model can be built upon with further computer analogies, which people who work with computers love. If we were using an automotive model to describe how the brain functions, I'm sure we would have many automotive mechanics theorizing on the nature of cognition too.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  It's not that people don't want to imagine, it's that you don't need to imagine that. I seems like you're hijacking the discussion to your pet issue. My point isn't about how good in general the computer analogy is, it really isn't. You should consider that maps of brain function began quite a while ago, before the start of the 20th (though accelerated by WWI). Here, the analogy was the machine and the mapping of brain followed functional units in machines. And if you consider the point I make (which pretty much echos the article), it's really a counter-example. The multi-layer organization of software show a system doesn't necessarily have to follow naive physical functional units, especially ones we naively perceive. That's it, there's nothing here forcing the computer analogy.
  - robwwilliams 5y ago
    I agree with joe! Neuroscientist love to reify a chunk of brain as responsible for function X. They have done this for 160 years. Only Karl Lashley’s work called “localization” into question but his work was swept aside in the Montcastle-Hubel-Wiesel era of big neuroscience. Now we do toy experiments using optogenetics of a single inbred strain of mouse and delude ourselves into thinking that we are achieving understanding of a highly complex system. I’ve worked in this field for 40 years and we are not even asking the right questions. It is a pity neuroscientists do not know more about analog computing. Can a neuroscientist understand an op amp? Probably not. To share the harsh light—can a CS expert in AI understand how to get to general AI? Probably not unless, like D. Hassabis, you have a solid background in neuroscience.
robwwilliams 5y ago
You are exactly right. I’m a full time geek neurogeneticist. I find most neuroscience models of brain function too neat and simple. My pinned tweet at @robwilliamsiii is one idea that hackers and CS types may enjoy. In brief—where is the clock? Where are the many levels of the stack that you mention.
acituan 5y ago
> I think this comes because the "sense of self" is a process that reflexively takes you as primary and indivisible Only if you reduce the sense of self to ego function, and a western one at that. Self is a much more complicated process. And good models of it already acknowledge functional and content heterogeneity eg subpersonalities, embodiment, aspirations, narratives, personhood, boundary problems etc. Self exists because it solves these problems and doing so was adaptive. > It seems like remarkable that people don't want to imagine there are the rough equivalent of many, many software layers between the level of the neuron and the level of "reason", "emotions", "self", "consciousness" and etc This is a false dichotomy. We already know we have a grab bag of specialized accelerator “hardware”, but also soft/firm-ware layers that glue things together. That’s the whole point of the article, you can’t encode autobiographical memories without hippocampus but that’s not the only thing hippocampus does nor it is the only thing required to encode those memories. And people have already upped the ante on this; Cartesian reductionism of trapping “computation” upstairs is also wrong. Cognition requires an embodied and embedded agent. It is not even a mere “brain-thing”.

PeterisP 5y ago

This reminds me of this nice paper (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/055624v2.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/055624v2.full.pdf) "Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?" exploring the (nonsensical) results we would get if we'd apply currently used neuroscience approaches to analyze an Atari console running a simple game.

radicaldreamer 5y ago

Similarly, there may be a layer below neurons -- microtubules. Something that many neuroscientists and AI researchers don't want to consider seriously, primarily because we're very limited in our ability to examine, interact, and model that layer. It also throws off by orders of magnitude the effort which would be required to fully model an organism neural behavior.

SubiculumCode 5y ago
There may be that layer, but is there evidence for that layer, and I'm not talking about that certain physicists hypothesis about microtubules and free will.
- zone411 5y ago
  There is evidence that each neuron performs calculations equivalent to a small neural net: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0896627321005018?dgcid=coauthor https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08966....
- Zuider 5y ago
  Sir Roger Penrose was investigating non-computability versus computability in brain behavior. I am not sure he even mentions free will. This highlights some of the unfortunate tensions in this debate, where people may feel obliged to hold to a literal materialism along with a computational theory of mind, and vigorously shoot down anything that threatens to unsettle that somewhat dogmatic position, for fear of strengthening the position of fundamentalist religious believers. In short, it is primarily a political sentiment, not a scientific one. We should be able to follow where evidence and rational argument leads without being held hostage to such concerns which are strictly irrelevant to the debate.

moonchrome 5y ago

>Big visible things like windows or the start menu aren't put in a single place, etc. Sure they are - in fact it's rendered to linear memory blocks of pixels.

jvanderbot 5y ago
OK, let's strain this analogy even more! In memory, sure, the image is in a block (although not really, it's composited (not composted) then shipped over a wire). But the functionality is basically everywhere. Similar in minds. We can see images "trip" localized circuits when they are recognized, but the comprehension and processing of the scene is muuuuuch more complicated. Similarly, where is the little 8bit block that handles a click on the start button, and why God Almighty is it so _far_ from the start button image!
- waterhouse 5y ago
  > it's composted (This is an amusing idea, but I think "composited" was the word.)
  - jvanderbot 5y ago
    Ha! Thank you

mabub24 5y ago

Or, you know, the analogy of brain as a computer with computerlike memory management simply might not be 100% useful all the time. > people don't want to imagine there are the rough equivalent of many, many software layers between the level of the neuron and the level of "reason", "emotions", "self", "consciousness" and etc It's not that people don't want to imagine, it's that you don't need to imagine that. You don't need to force how the brain functions into the model of a modern computer, though it might simplify and be popular. It's often a helpful analogy/metaphor, and for people that know a lot about computers it often allows them to prognosticate and theorize using elaborate analogies built on top of more analogies, but it's equally helpful to not insist that the thing must be the analogy. For instance, when I talk to a good friend who is a neuroscientist and active in the development of prosthetics with neural interfaces he is far more skeptical (healthily though) of the computational model than any person I speak to in software engineering or the tech industry more broadly. That's likely because the analogy and model can be built upon with further computer analogies, which people who work with computers love. If we were using an automotive model to describe how the brain functions, I'm sure we would have many automotive mechanics theorizing on the nature of cognition too.

joe_the_user 5y ago
It's not that people don't want to imagine, it's that you don't need to imagine that. I seems like you're hijacking the discussion to your pet issue. My point isn't about how good in general the computer analogy is, it really isn't. You should consider that maps of brain function began quite a while ago, before the start of the 20th (though accelerated by WWI). Here, the analogy was the machine and the mapping of brain followed functional units in machines. And if you consider the point I make (which pretty much echos the article), it's really a counter-example. The multi-layer organization of software show a system doesn't necessarily have to follow naive physical functional units, especially ones we naively perceive. That's it, there's nothing here forcing the computer analogy.
- robwwilliams 5y ago
  I agree with joe! Neuroscientist love to reify a chunk of brain as responsible for function X. They have done this for 160 years. Only Karl Lashley’s work called “localization” into question but his work was swept aside in the Montcastle-Hubel-Wiesel era of big neuroscience. Now we do toy experiments using optogenetics of a single inbred strain of mouse and delude ourselves into thinking that we are achieving understanding of a highly complex system. I’ve worked in this field for 40 years and we are not even asking the right questions. It is a pity neuroscientists do not know more about analog computing. Can a neuroscientist understand an op amp? Probably not. To share the harsh light—can a CS expert in AI understand how to get to general AI? Probably not unless, like D. Hassabis, you have a solid background in neuroscience.

robwwilliams 5y ago

You are exactly right. I’m a full time geek neurogeneticist. I find most neuroscience models of brain function too neat and simple. My pinned tweet at @robwilliamsiii is one idea that hackers and CS types may enjoy. In brief—where is the clock? Where are the many levels of the stack that you mention.

acituan 5y ago

> I think this comes because the "sense of self" is a process that reflexively takes you as primary and indivisible Only if you reduce the sense of self to ego function, and a western one at that. Self is a much more complicated process. And good models of it already acknowledge functional and content heterogeneity eg subpersonalities, embodiment, aspirations, narratives, personhood, boundary problems etc. Self exists because it solves these problems and doing so was adaptive. > It seems like remarkable that people don't want to imagine there are the rough equivalent of many, many software layers between the level of the neuron and the level of "reason", "emotions", "self", "consciousness" and etc This is a false dichotomy. We already know we have a grab bag of specialized accelerator “hardware”, but also soft/firm-ware layers that glue things together. That’s the whole point of the article, you can’t encode autobiographical memories without hippocampus but that’s not the only thing hippocampus does nor it is the only thing required to encode those memories. And people have already upped the ante on this; Cartesian reductionism of trapping “computation” upstairs is also wrong. Cognition requires an embodied and embedded agent. It is not even a mere “brain-thing”.