13 ms·

Can anyone ELI5 this?

by inpdx 5y ago

colechristensen 5y ago
Eh, not really. It's hard to describe features of chaos / nonlinear dynamics simply. There are features of chaotic systems that undergo phase changes from one type of behavior to another. Think a signal on one side of the transition to look like a pure sine wave and on the other side of the transition to look like purely random white noise. What these guys are reporting is that they found a parameter, a signal they can measure in brains that seems to correlate with consciousness. When the signal is right up near the edge of this kind of chaotic phase transition, the subject is conscious, when nowhere near the phase transition, you aren't. So they have a way to sort of measure and quantify consciousness and perhaps even control it a little by measuring and doing things to manipulate this signal. It might be sort of like an OPEN sign in a store, just a signal that happens to reflect consciousness, or this brain wave behavior might be a fundamental part of consciousness and higher thinking. It all seems quite interesting. Projecting guesses out for this is that chaotic dynamics are a fundamental part of how our brains, especially at the highest levels work. One would guess given this evidence and other things that one of the things that makes consciousness possible is a complex system kept balanced at a knife edge of a certain kind of chaotic phase transition. It's also the kind of thing that can open a backdoor for free will in a deterministic universe, your brain in this chaotic state might behave deterministically but the actual state would never be knowable with enough precision to predict the outcome of inputs for any amount of time (butterfly effect).
- verisimi 5y ago
  "Think a signal on one side of the transition to look like a pure sine wave and on the other side of the transition to look like purely random white noise." This reminds me of something Rupert Sheldrake says is possible - that consciousness is 'off-site', that the body is more of a radio receptor.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    There is no magic, nor room for it for any person that believes in the scientific method. There are a sufficient number of real mysteries and wonders not to waste time with pseudoscience. The brain is not a consciousness antennae, and there are no good reasons to think so. Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon entirely dependent on and contained within the brain.
    - unsui 5y ago
      agreed. brain-as-a-radio-antenna is a common trope amongst those who would believe that meatspace isn't capable of generating consciousness alone (always looking for some sort of elan vital, to equate with another pursuit for the magic stuff of life). From a purposely scientific perspective, we have to begin with the working assumption that materialism is true, until such point that it is conclusively proven false. There is no evidence that the brain works in any way like an antenna, at least insofar as any electromagnetic waves or other such messaging systems supported by the physics of our current world as we know it. Thus, the brain-as-antenna thinking necessarily pre-supposes an other-worldly explanation; it assumes what it's trying to prove. Even if it were true (HIGHLY unlikely), we can't begin with that as the starting point in our search for understanding it. Otherwise, our brains are incredibly adept at shaping our thoughts and concepts to fit those prescribed notions of animacy and otherworldliness. It's no wonder that many pseudoscientific principles BEGIN with the presupposition that you have to be willing to believe in order for the effect to become apparent.
      - bidaewnl 5y ago
        Except materialism has been proven false for the past 100 years thanks to quantum mechanics. There is mountains of evidence against it and none for it.
        unsui 5y ago
        This is laughably false. Materialism, aka "physicalism", simply posits that all phenomena have an underlying physical basis, i.e., no "spooky" or magic stuff. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/ Quantum mechanics follows from physicalism by demonstrating that the physical nature of reality is incredibly complex and counterintuitive, particularly at quantum scales. But that in no way implies that quantum mechanics leads to non-materialism or opens the door for materialism to be false. It simply becomes subsumed into materialism itself: materialism requires that all phenomena be ultimately explainable via physical explanations, and those explanations must account for quantum-mechanical phenomena.
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    I'm interpreting it as there is a point in the meatspace of your brain that is like a sailboat on a stormy sea. The Water is one level, the air is another, and your consciousness is the sailboat that glides around where the two meet.
  - Scarblac 5y ago
    There are various drugs that alter consciousness. That shouldn't be possible if the brain were only a receptor.
    - verisimi 5y ago
      Do you think? Using the radio metaphor, I think I could edit the radio so that the signal would be heard differently. Just turning up the volume is a sort of alteration of consciousness, as would be increasing/decreasing the bass/treble. These are alterations to the way the sound is experienced, but do not affect the signal itself. Maybe taking drugs would be akin to running the received signal through some sort of special effects board? Ie a different/unusual type of alteration to the signal.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- awb 5y ago
  > It's also the kind of thing that can open a backdoor for free will in a deterministic universe, your brain in this chaotic state might behave deterministically but the actual state would never be knowable with enough precision to predict the outcome of inputs for any amount of time (butterfly effect). I think all it would mean is that the human brain is non-deterministic. That’s different from free will though which is really an untestable, philosophical idea rather than a testable scientific hypothesis. In any event, a random chaos state can be both non-deterministic and not intentional, or what many would call “free will”.
  - darawk 5y ago
    > I think all it would mean is that the human brain is non-deterministic. Chaotic systems are still deterministic. They're just extremely sensitive to their initial conditions/inputs.
    - eightysixfour 5y ago
      I always find it interesting drawing the determinism line on chaotic systems. For example, is a chaotic system that depends on initial conditions so precise that having adequate measurement to predict the outcome would violate the uncertainty principle still deterministic?
      - azeirah 5y ago
        As far as I understand it, determinism is about being able to predict the next state if you have all knowledge about a system. That we can't have all knowledge about most systems in the real world doesn't mean they're not deterministic. And who knows what kind of magical science we'll find in the future that turns everything we know about measurement upside down?
    - kylebyproxy 5y ago
      > Chaotic systems are still deterministic. Is there some definitive proof for this, or are we just taking it as a useful assumption?
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  For me personally, when I use the term "free will", I mean something stronger than "deterministic, but not provably so". That's more of a "free will of the gaps" - claiming that free will is hiding somewhere in the holes in our knowledge.
  - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    a) Information complexity is a measurable physical quantity. b) Unlike matter and energy, information complexity does not obey laws of conservation. (Demonstrably so.) c) Ergo, an information complexity singularity can exist, and if it does - we would be reasonably correct in calling it "free will".
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      Can you point me in the direction of further reading?
      - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
        Unironically Wikipedia is a good start.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    Whatever people mean by free will, this feeling like we're driving our bodies and minds around usually, there's no mechanism by which it could exist. Either the things in our brains follow deterministic patterns or they're random. Neither one of those gives me room to decide to get a glass of orange juice. In fact, any desire I have at all for an orange is dependent on that type of plant having emerged billions of years ago. I can imagine a fruit that doesn't exist, but I can't desire it and I can't buy it at the store. I had no say in any part of that causal chain whatsoever.
    - MarcoZavala 5y ago
- bell-cot 5y ago
  +1...but my reaction to folks who worry much about free will in a deterministic universe, "butterfly effect quasi-free will", etc. is that they really should have gotten outside to play more when they were kids.
  - MarcoZavala 5y ago
- root_axis 5y ago
  > it's also the kind of thing that can open a backdoor for free will in a deterministic universe, your brain in this chaotic state might behave deterministically but the actual state would never be knowable with enough precision to predict the outcome of inputs for any amount of time Hmm, what about predictability conflicts with the idea of free will? Just because my actions are predictable doesn't mean they aren't a reflection of my will. It seems to me that the opposite is true, there is no coherent "you" if your actions aren't based on a consistent set of rules since that implies how you behave ultimately has no connection to who you are. To escape determinism means to become literally insane.
- antonvs 5y ago
  > It's also the kind of thing that can open a backdoor for free will in a deterministic universe It really doesn't, because free will implies control over one's choices. Randomness, non-determinism, etc. doesn't provide that, and I bet you can't describe a way in which it could.
alan-hn 5y ago
So to put things simply, this comes from a view of a neuron (or network of neurons) as a dynamical system with various states. These states are constantly in flux and we can describe the states as patterns that are seen from plotting the pieces of the instantaneous state of the system in question. These patterns will repeat and change over time based on inputs and such, hence the term "phase change" At least that's my current understanding of the matter, coming from the mouth of an undergrad late in a biochem degree with a focus on neuro
wahern 5y ago
The 1992 book, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, arguably remains the classic introduction to complexity theory. And it doesn't require any maths.
dave_sullivan 5y ago
They applied this method https://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/gottwald/preprints/testforchaos_MPI.pdf https://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/gottwald/preprints/testforch... to brain scan data

Can anyone ELI5 this?

by inpdx 5y ago

Can anyone ELI5 this?

Eh, not really. It's hard to describe features of chaos / nonlinear dynamics simply. There are features of chaotic systems that undergo phase changes from one type of behavior to another. Think a signal on one side of the transition to look like a pure sine wave and on the other side of the transition to look like purely random white noise. What these guys are reporting is that they found a parameter, a signal they can measure in brains that seems to correlate with consciousness. When the signal is right up near the edge of this kind of chaotic phase transition, the subject is conscious, when nowhere near the phase transition, you aren't. So they have a way to sort of measure and quantify consciousness and perhaps even control it a little by measuring and doing things to manipulate this signal. It might be sort of like an OPEN sign in a store, just a signal that happens to reflect consciousness, or this brain wave behavior might be a fundamental part of consciousness and higher thinking. It all seems quite interesting. Projecting guesses out for this is that chaotic dynamics are a fundamental part of how our brains, especially at the highest levels work. One would guess given this evidence and other things that one of the things that makes consciousness possible is a complex system kept balanced at a knife edge of a certain kind of chaotic phase transition. It's also the kind of thing that can open a backdoor for free will in a deterministic universe, your brain in this chaotic state might behave deterministically but the actual state would never be knowable with enough precision to predict the outcome of inputs for any amount of time (butterfly effect).

verisimi 5y ago
"Think a signal on one side of the transition to look like a pure sine wave and on the other side of the transition to look like purely random white noise." This reminds me of something Rupert Sheldrake says is possible - that consciousness is 'off-site', that the body is more of a radio receptor.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  There is no magic, nor room for it for any person that believes in the scientific method. There are a sufficient number of real mysteries and wonders not to waste time with pseudoscience. The brain is not a consciousness antennae, and there are no good reasons to think so. Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon entirely dependent on and contained within the brain.
  - unsui 5y ago
    agreed. brain-as-a-radio-antenna is a common trope amongst those who would believe that meatspace isn't capable of generating consciousness alone (always looking for some sort of elan vital, to equate with another pursuit for the magic stuff of life). From a purposely scientific perspective, we have to begin with the working assumption that materialism is true, until such point that it is conclusively proven false. There is no evidence that the brain works in any way like an antenna, at least insofar as any electromagnetic waves or other such messaging systems supported by the physics of our current world as we know it. Thus, the brain-as-antenna thinking necessarily pre-supposes an other-worldly explanation; it assumes what it's trying to prove. Even if it were true (HIGHLY unlikely), we can't begin with that as the starting point in our search for understanding it. Otherwise, our brains are incredibly adept at shaping our thoughts and concepts to fit those prescribed notions of animacy and otherworldliness. It's no wonder that many pseudoscientific principles BEGIN with the presupposition that you have to be willing to believe in order for the effect to become apparent.
    - bidaewnl 5y ago
      Except materialism has been proven false for the past 100 years thanks to quantum mechanics. There is mountains of evidence against it and none for it.
      - unsui 5y ago
        This is laughably false. Materialism, aka "physicalism", simply posits that all phenomena have an underlying physical basis, i.e., no "spooky" or magic stuff. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/ Quantum mechanics follows from physicalism by demonstrating that the physical nature of reality is incredibly complex and counterintuitive, particularly at quantum scales. But that in no way implies that quantum mechanics leads to non-materialism or opens the door for materialism to be false. It simply becomes subsumed into materialism itself: materialism requires that all phenomena be ultimately explainable via physical explanations, and those explanations must account for quantum-mechanical phenomena.
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  I'm interpreting it as there is a point in the meatspace of your brain that is like a sailboat on a stormy sea. The Water is one level, the air is another, and your consciousness is the sailboat that glides around where the two meet.
- Scarblac 5y ago
  There are various drugs that alter consciousness. That shouldn't be possible if the brain were only a receptor.
  - verisimi 5y ago
    Do you think? Using the radio metaphor, I think I could edit the radio so that the signal would be heard differently. Just turning up the volume is a sort of alteration of consciousness, as would be increasing/decreasing the bass/treble. These are alterations to the way the sound is experienced, but do not affect the signal itself. Maybe taking drugs would be akin to running the received signal through some sort of special effects board? Ie a different/unusual type of alteration to the signal.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
awb 5y ago
> It's also the kind of thing that can open a backdoor for free will in a deterministic universe, your brain in this chaotic state might behave deterministically but the actual state would never be knowable with enough precision to predict the outcome of inputs for any amount of time (butterfly effect). I think all it would mean is that the human brain is non-deterministic. That’s different from free will though which is really an untestable, philosophical idea rather than a testable scientific hypothesis. In any event, a random chaos state can be both non-deterministic and not intentional, or what many would call “free will”.
- darawk 5y ago
  > I think all it would mean is that the human brain is non-deterministic. Chaotic systems are still deterministic. They're just extremely sensitive to their initial conditions/inputs.
  - eightysixfour 5y ago
    I always find it interesting drawing the determinism line on chaotic systems. For example, is a chaotic system that depends on initial conditions so precise that having adequate measurement to predict the outcome would violate the uncertainty principle still deterministic?
    - azeirah 5y ago
      As far as I understand it, determinism is about being able to predict the next state if you have all knowledge about a system. That we can't have all knowledge about most systems in the real world doesn't mean they're not deterministic. And who knows what kind of magical science we'll find in the future that turns everything we know about measurement upside down?
  - kylebyproxy 5y ago
    > Chaotic systems are still deterministic. Is there some definitive proof for this, or are we just taking it as a useful assumption?
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
For me personally, when I use the term "free will", I mean something stronger than "deterministic, but not provably so". That's more of a "free will of the gaps" - claiming that free will is hiding somewhere in the holes in our knowledge.
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  a) Information complexity is a measurable physical quantity. b) Unlike matter and energy, information complexity does not obey laws of conservation. (Demonstrably so.) c) Ergo, an information complexity singularity can exist, and if it does - we would be reasonably correct in calling it "free will".
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Can you point me in the direction of further reading?
    - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
      Unironically Wikipedia is a good start.
- nefitty 5y ago
  Whatever people mean by free will, this feeling like we're driving our bodies and minds around usually, there's no mechanism by which it could exist. Either the things in our brains follow deterministic patterns or they're random. Neither one of those gives me room to decide to get a glass of orange juice. In fact, any desire I have at all for an orange is dependent on that type of plant having emerged billions of years ago. I can imagine a fruit that doesn't exist, but I can't desire it and I can't buy it at the store. I had no say in any part of that causal chain whatsoever.
  - MarcoZavala 5y ago
bell-cot 5y ago
+1...but my reaction to folks who worry much about free will in a deterministic universe, "butterfly effect quasi-free will", etc. is that they really should have gotten outside to play more when they were kids.
- MarcoZavala 5y ago
root_axis 5y ago
> it's also the kind of thing that can open a backdoor for free will in a deterministic universe, your brain in this chaotic state might behave deterministically but the actual state would never be knowable with enough precision to predict the outcome of inputs for any amount of time Hmm, what about predictability conflicts with the idea of free will? Just because my actions are predictable doesn't mean they aren't a reflection of my will. It seems to me that the opposite is true, there is no coherent "you" if your actions aren't based on a consistent set of rules since that implies how you behave ultimately has no connection to who you are. To escape determinism means to become literally insane.
antonvs 5y ago
> It's also the kind of thing that can open a backdoor for free will in a deterministic universe It really doesn't, because free will implies control over one's choices. Randomness, non-determinism, etc. doesn't provide that, and I bet you can't describe a way in which it could.

alan-hn 5y ago

So to put things simply, this comes from a view of a neuron (or network of neurons) as a dynamical system with various states. These states are constantly in flux and we can describe the states as patterns that are seen from plotting the pieces of the instantaneous state of the system in question. These patterns will repeat and change over time based on inputs and such, hence the term "phase change" At least that's my current understanding of the matter, coming from the mouth of an undergrad late in a biochem degree with a focus on neuro

wahern 5y ago

The 1992 book, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, arguably remains the classic introduction to complexity theory. And it doesn't require any maths.

dave_sullivan 5y ago

They applied this method https://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/gottwald/preprints/testforchaos_MPI.pdf https://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/gottwald/preprints/testforch... to brain scan data