6 ms·

I think a lot of people would expect some evidence for your first phrase.

edouard-harris 5y ago
You're right. I'll edit the parent to soften the assertion, though I do consider it to be virtually certain. In terms of evidence: the simplest argument is probably that humans appear to consistently obey the laws of physics, and the laws of physics appear to be mathematical.
- ars 5y ago
  Something can be mathematical and also not computable.
canjobear 5y ago
Given sufficiently powerful computers, human behavior could be simulated. The action of the computer would be describable as a (possibly enormously long and complicated) equation. I don't see how you can disagree with this unless you think there is something metaphysically inexplicable about human behavior.
- reverend_gonzo 5y ago
  Sure, and those sufficiently powerful computers don’t exist yet.
  - canjobear 5y ago
    The actual existence of the actual machine is irrelevant for the claim that human behavior can be reduced to an equation. What is it about human behavior that you think could not be simulated by a machine?
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  Basically this line of argument boils down to assuming something about something we don’t and may never have. Until we have this technology should we adjust laws for hypotheticals? No.
  - canjobear 5y ago
    Put another way: the claim that humans cannot be modeled as equations equates to the claim that humans cannot be modeled using physics. Do you want to defend that?
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > claim that humans cannot be modeled as equations equates to the claim that humans cannot be modeled using physics We don’t have a complete theory of physics. We don’t have any viable models of human thought. This is a non sequitur.
      - canjobear 5y ago
        We do have a theory of physics which is likely to be able to cover all the phenomena of biology[1], but that is beside the point. If you think that human behavior cannot be reduced to equations, then you think it cannot be predicted mathematically. I can only interpret this as a claim that there is something about human behavior which is supernatural. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07884 https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07884
        JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > If you think that human behavior cannot be reduced to equations, then you think it cannot be predicted mathematically. I can only interpret this as a claim that there is something about human behavior which is supernatural. You’ve reduced the question of whether our universe is deterministic, something the greatest minds in physics have debated for a century and continue to debate, to a sound bite. That’s disingenuous. There may be phenomena we cannot accurately model and predict for fundamental reasons that have nothing to do with the supernatural. We are so far from scientifically understanding consciousness that we don’t even have an agreed-upon empirical definition for it, let alone a way to measure it. That gap in understanding undermines any claim that it can be modelled this way or that.
        5y ago
- sjy 5y ago
  You can accept that the brain is governed by physical laws, without conceding that the brain can be simulated. Emulation on the atomic level may not be computationally feasible. The emergence of human behaviour from a less detailed simulation is not guaranteed. These possibilities are discussed under the heading “Scale separation” in the roadmap to whole brain emulation published by the Future of Humanity Institute [1]. > At first it may appear unlikely that a complex system with many degrees of freedom like the brain could be modelled with the right causal dynamics, but without taking into account the smallest parts … However, state variables of complex systems can be quantitatively predicted when there is ‘scale separation’: when different aspects of the system exist on sufficiently (orders of magnitude) different scales (of size, energy, time etc), they can become uncoupled … [an] example is the scale separation between electric currents and logic operations in a computer … > When there is no scale separation (such as in fluid turbulence) macroscale predictions become impossible without simulating the entire microscale. An important issue to be determined is whether such a cut‐off exists in the case of the human brain … if it could be demonstrated that there is no such scale, it would demonstrate the infeasibility of whole brain emulation. The FHI is assuming scale invariance in order to test it experimentally. We shouldn’t assume it for the purpose of analysing the roles played by humans and AI under IP legislation. [1]: https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf
lordlic 5y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computationalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computationalism It's a very common worldview among the tech set. Edit: Uh, downvotes, really? I think it's totally reasonable to assume this as a given since it's, like, pretty obviously true. If anything the parent needs to provide their own extraordinary evidence for why consciousness would be non-computable. I'm just trying to provide some context for them to read up more on some stuff that apparently everyone but them (who has given it any thought) already knows about.
- tremon 5y ago
  You're merely repeating the GP's assertion, and completely ignoring the parent's request for corroborating evidence. What you hold as self-evident is still just your anecdata, and cannot be extrapolated to "the tech set", unless the tech set includes only you.
  - lordlic 5y ago
    I'm just pointing out that it's a common belief (and it is, your ignorance notwithstanding) and giving them the search term to read more if they're interested. What's so difficult to understand about this? And it's the philosophy of mind; there's not really "corroborating evidence" to present so much as there are logical arguments that you need to read up on yourself.
- karaterobot 5y ago
  Downvoted because the commenter asked for evidence, and you just provided a definition. The statement that it's "obviously true" is not evidence, or even an argument. If I said it's "obviously not true", would you consider yourself refuted? Probably not.
robbedpeter 5y ago
The brain is a biological system of interconnected neurons. Neuroscience has shown neurons operate digitally - on and off. The brain is a biological computer. There is no magic, no mystical quantum "thing" enabling human intelligence. We're not picking up some metaspectral soul transmission from an alternate universe. We're advanced binary pattern processors, and we're only a handful of orders of magnitude more powerful than consumer level hardware. The algorithm we run on is special, but it's physically encoded and self generating, based in our DNA and physical development. We're vastly complex but entirely built of relatively simple fundamental building blocks. We are computers, in the abstract sense of Turing machines and such concepts.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  >Neuroscience has shown neurons operate digitally - on and off. [citation needed]
  - porkbrain 5y ago
    Parent refers to the behaviour of generating action potentials which travel to synapses connecting (mostly) axons with dendrites. The continuous (analogue) signal processing pre- and post- synapse seems to be a massive part of how neurons achieve the computation they do. A hypothesis I subscribe to claims that it is cheaper to compute locally with molecule gradients and protein folding than with spikes. Brains leverage that. The specific statement you quoted is to the best of my knowledge inaccurate. I am not an expert, my understanding of neurons is largely is based on [0], [1], [2]. [0]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/principles-neural-design https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/principles-neural-design [1]: http://www.sci.utah.edu/~macleod/bioen/be6003/notes/W08-spruston_nature_2008.pdf http://www.sci.utah.edu/~macleod/bioen/be6003/notes/W08-spru... [2]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/functional-connections-cortical-areas https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/functional-connections-cortic...
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    A neuron fires, or it doesn't. The patterns received by neurons via synapses are binary. The synapses themselves are analog, and the activation can trigger in several ways, leading to complex behavior, but the signal each individual neuron receives from any and every other neuron in the brain is digital. Where an impulse comes from, when it is sent, the current charge state of the receiving neuron, the specific neurotransmitters released by the axons, and the efficiency of signal transmission at a given point in time all play a part in the signal sent along dendritic, but at any given point in time a neuron is firing or isn't, and that's the only state that matters to the other neurons it's connected to. The biggest difference between biological brains and artificial neural networks is the analog nature of biological timing compared to the arbitrary cycles of software. Spike timing dependent plasticity networks address some of the problem of variable timing and its impact on signaling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike-timing-dependent_plasticity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike-timing-dependent_plastic... At any given moment, you could capture the state of a biological brain as a binary number. The model would need to account for all sorts of analog mechanisms and a huge, biologically messy graph of connections with dozens of variations across a handful of neuron types, and the length of a synapse and where it physically connects or touches other synapses without connecting directly and... lots of stuff that's hard to model and even hard to see. I'm not arguing that every part is digital or even equivalent to computers on silicon, simply that the basic mechanism of computation is itself digital pattern processing. It literally cannot be anything else. There is no evidence or theory to indicate any other plausible method of operation. All the analog stuff can be swapped out with an arbitrary bit length representation and the functionality is retained. Remove the digital assumption and everything breaks. You need magic or spirit to make it work, which is ridiculous because silicon computers proved that binary computation is a perfectly fine way to represent and process data. Quantum processing in biological brains is magical thinking performed in a desperate attempt to ascribe eminence to human cognition, because for some reason people don't like the idea that brains do digital processing. We are messy and vastly complex and sophisticated digital pattern processors. Which makes evolutionary sense, because that's how our predecessors work, all the way back to single cell organisms and self replicating DNA chemistry. Signals and patterns in the real world can be represented as binary to an arbitrary precision. The Planck length dictates the maximum level of precision relevant to our universe. https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-many-bits-of-information-can-be-contained-by-the-whole-universe https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-many-bits-of-informati... Human brains achieved a special state of depth and breadth of processing, concurrent with physically encoded, evolved algorithms in our neural architecture. The arrival of biology at human cognition affords us the privilege of deep reflection, the apparent subjective reality we experience, and the thus far unlimited scope of conception such that we can make approximations about the size of the universe or the mass of a photon. Or the operations of the minds we possess. We operate in binary - the explanation is sufficient, simple, and corresponds to all known evidence. There aren't any outstanding questions requiring that premise to be questioned.

You're right. I'll edit the parent to soften the assertion, though I do consider it to be virtually certain. In terms of evidence: the simplest argument is probably that humans appear to consistently obey the laws of physics, and the laws of physics appear to be mathematical.

ars 5y ago
Something can be mathematical and also not computable.

canjobear 5y ago

Given sufficiently powerful computers, human behavior could be simulated. The action of the computer would be describable as a (possibly enormously long and complicated) equation. I don't see how you can disagree with this unless you think there is something metaphysically inexplicable about human behavior.

reverend_gonzo 5y ago
Sure, and those sufficiently powerful computers don’t exist yet.
- canjobear 5y ago
  The actual existence of the actual machine is irrelevant for the claim that human behavior can be reduced to an equation. What is it about human behavior that you think could not be simulated by a machine?
2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
Basically this line of argument boils down to assuming something about something we don’t and may never have. Until we have this technology should we adjust laws for hypotheticals? No.
- canjobear 5y ago
  Put another way: the claim that humans cannot be modeled as equations equates to the claim that humans cannot be modeled using physics. Do you want to defend that?
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > claim that humans cannot be modeled as equations equates to the claim that humans cannot be modeled using physics We don’t have a complete theory of physics. We don’t have any viable models of human thought. This is a non sequitur.
    - canjobear 5y ago
      We do have a theory of physics which is likely to be able to cover all the phenomena of biology[1], but that is beside the point. If you think that human behavior cannot be reduced to equations, then you think it cannot be predicted mathematically. I can only interpret this as a claim that there is something about human behavior which is supernatural. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07884 https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07884
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > If you think that human behavior cannot be reduced to equations, then you think it cannot be predicted mathematically. I can only interpret this as a claim that there is something about human behavior which is supernatural. You’ve reduced the question of whether our universe is deterministic, something the greatest minds in physics have debated for a century and continue to debate, to a sound bite. That’s disingenuous. There may be phenomena we cannot accurately model and predict for fundamental reasons that have nothing to do with the supernatural. We are so far from scientifically understanding consciousness that we don’t even have an agreed-upon empirical definition for it, let alone a way to measure it. That gap in understanding undermines any claim that it can be modelled this way or that.
        5y ago
sjy 5y ago
You can accept that the brain is governed by physical laws, without conceding that the brain can be simulated. Emulation on the atomic level may not be computationally feasible. The emergence of human behaviour from a less detailed simulation is not guaranteed. These possibilities are discussed under the heading “Scale separation” in the roadmap to whole brain emulation published by the Future of Humanity Institute [1]. > At first it may appear unlikely that a complex system with many degrees of freedom like the brain could be modelled with the right causal dynamics, but without taking into account the smallest parts … However, state variables of complex systems can be quantitatively predicted when there is ‘scale separation’: when different aspects of the system exist on sufficiently (orders of magnitude) different scales (of size, energy, time etc), they can become uncoupled … [an] example is the scale separation between electric currents and logic operations in a computer … > When there is no scale separation (such as in fluid turbulence) macroscale predictions become impossible without simulating the entire microscale. An important issue to be determined is whether such a cut‐off exists in the case of the human brain … if it could be demonstrated that there is no such scale, it would demonstrate the infeasibility of whole brain emulation. The FHI is assuming scale invariance in order to test it experimentally. We shouldn’t assume it for the purpose of analysing the roles played by humans and AI under IP legislation. [1]: https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf

lordlic 5y ago

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computationalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computationalism It's a very common worldview among the tech set. Edit: Uh, downvotes, really? I think it's totally reasonable to assume this as a given since it's, like, pretty obviously true. If anything the parent needs to provide their own extraordinary evidence for why consciousness would be non-computable. I'm just trying to provide some context for them to read up more on some stuff that apparently everyone but them (who has given it any thought) already knows about.

tremon 5y ago
You're merely repeating the GP's assertion, and completely ignoring the parent's request for corroborating evidence. What you hold as self-evident is still just your anecdata, and cannot be extrapolated to "the tech set", unless the tech set includes only you.
- lordlic 5y ago
  I'm just pointing out that it's a common belief (and it is, your ignorance notwithstanding) and giving them the search term to read more if they're interested. What's so difficult to understand about this? And it's the philosophy of mind; there's not really "corroborating evidence" to present so much as there are logical arguments that you need to read up on yourself.
karaterobot 5y ago
Downvoted because the commenter asked for evidence, and you just provided a definition. The statement that it's "obviously true" is not evidence, or even an argument. If I said it's "obviously not true", would you consider yourself refuted? Probably not.

robbedpeter 5y ago

The brain is a biological system of interconnected neurons. Neuroscience has shown neurons operate digitally - on and off. The brain is a biological computer. There is no magic, no mystical quantum "thing" enabling human intelligence. We're not picking up some metaspectral soul transmission from an alternate universe. We're advanced binary pattern processors, and we're only a handful of orders of magnitude more powerful than consumer level hardware. The algorithm we run on is special, but it's physically encoded and self generating, based in our DNA and physical development. We're vastly complex but entirely built of relatively simple fundamental building blocks. We are computers, in the abstract sense of Turing machines and such concepts.

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
>Neuroscience has shown neurons operate digitally - on and off. [citation needed]
- porkbrain 5y ago
  Parent refers to the behaviour of generating action potentials which travel to synapses connecting (mostly) axons with dendrites. The continuous (analogue) signal processing pre- and post- synapse seems to be a massive part of how neurons achieve the computation they do. A hypothesis I subscribe to claims that it is cheaper to compute locally with molecule gradients and protein folding than with spikes. Brains leverage that. The specific statement you quoted is to the best of my knowledge inaccurate. I am not an expert, my understanding of neurons is largely is based on [0], [1], [2]. [0]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/principles-neural-design https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/principles-neural-design [1]: http://www.sci.utah.edu/~macleod/bioen/be6003/notes/W08-spruston_nature_2008.pdf http://www.sci.utah.edu/~macleod/bioen/be6003/notes/W08-spru... [2]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/functional-connections-cortical-areas https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/functional-connections-cortic...
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  A neuron fires, or it doesn't. The patterns received by neurons via synapses are binary. The synapses themselves are analog, and the activation can trigger in several ways, leading to complex behavior, but the signal each individual neuron receives from any and every other neuron in the brain is digital. Where an impulse comes from, when it is sent, the current charge state of the receiving neuron, the specific neurotransmitters released by the axons, and the efficiency of signal transmission at a given point in time all play a part in the signal sent along dendritic, but at any given point in time a neuron is firing or isn't, and that's the only state that matters to the other neurons it's connected to. The biggest difference between biological brains and artificial neural networks is the analog nature of biological timing compared to the arbitrary cycles of software. Spike timing dependent plasticity networks address some of the problem of variable timing and its impact on signaling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike-timing-dependent_plasticity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike-timing-dependent_plastic... At any given moment, you could capture the state of a biological brain as a binary number. The model would need to account for all sorts of analog mechanisms and a huge, biologically messy graph of connections with dozens of variations across a handful of neuron types, and the length of a synapse and where it physically connects or touches other synapses without connecting directly and... lots of stuff that's hard to model and even hard to see. I'm not arguing that every part is digital or even equivalent to computers on silicon, simply that the basic mechanism of computation is itself digital pattern processing. It literally cannot be anything else. There is no evidence or theory to indicate any other plausible method of operation. All the analog stuff can be swapped out with an arbitrary bit length representation and the functionality is retained. Remove the digital assumption and everything breaks. You need magic or spirit to make it work, which is ridiculous because silicon computers proved that binary computation is a perfectly fine way to represent and process data. Quantum processing in biological brains is magical thinking performed in a desperate attempt to ascribe eminence to human cognition, because for some reason people don't like the idea that brains do digital processing. We are messy and vastly complex and sophisticated digital pattern processors. Which makes evolutionary sense, because that's how our predecessors work, all the way back to single cell organisms and self replicating DNA chemistry. Signals and patterns in the real world can be represented as binary to an arbitrary precision. The Planck length dictates the maximum level of precision relevant to our universe. https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-many-bits-of-information-can-be-contained-by-the-whole-universe https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-many-bits-of-informati... Human brains achieved a special state of depth and breadth of processing, concurrent with physically encoded, evolved algorithms in our neural architecture. The arrival of biology at human cognition affords us the privilege of deep reflection, the apparent subjective reality we experience, and the thus far unlimited scope of conception such that we can make approximations about the size of the universe or the mass of a photon. Or the operations of the minds we possess. We operate in binary - the explanation is sufficient, simple, and corresponds to all known evidence. There aren't any outstanding questions requiring that premise to be questioned.