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Only a matter of time before this goes the way of the open worm project. Incredible that they’ve increased the number of neurons imageable by this magnitude. A

Only a matter of time before this goes the way of the open worm project. Incredible that they’ve increased the number of neurons imageable by this magnitude. A similar increase from here would encompass the human brain. Models of the human brain would likely be indistinguishable in every way, shape, and form from the real thing.

minihat 3y ago
What will we do with a completed connectome? Imagine handing a late 1800s scholar a modern processor. Give him a wiring diagram, and a voltmeter. What could he learn from it? The connectome will be a big step, but not the penultimate one, in solving human intelligence.
- ecks4ndr0s 3y ago
  Maybe trying to reverse engineer it using GNNs until they produce the same output(within some error margin) for various arbitrary inputs? Dunno.
  - Retric 3y ago
    I am sure there’s a great deal we can learn about how the brain actually functions from such simulations. However GNNs don’t really capture the underlying mechanisms very well. Our brains use different kinds of Neurons which also use many different neural transmitters, their location in 3D space matters, as do stuff like blood alcohol content, O2 levels, adrenaline, signal propagation delays, etc it’s a stupidly complicated system even above and beyond the number of neurons.
    - ChainOfFools 3y ago
      Also limiting it to neurons ignores all of the activity and modulatuon that's increasingly being attributed to astrocytes and other CNS "scaffolding"
      - ecks4ndr0s 3y ago
        As many things as possible would have to be taken into account. Maybe a different mathematical formalization is necessary.
- chrisweekly 3y ago
  "penultimate" means "next-to-last"; I'm thinking you used the wrong word, or are making an obscure point I don't follow.
aperrien 3y ago
Interestingly, the NeuroMechFly project [1] already exists, so integrating the two together may already be under way. At 50 million synapses, a modest gaming PC should be able to run the simulation. I wonder what people will think once they are able to do this at home? [1] https://prelights.biologists.com/highlights/neuromechfly-a-neuromechanical-model-of-adult-drosophila-melanogaster/ https://prelights.biologists.com/highlights/neuromechfly-a-n...
coldtea 3y ago
>Models of the human brain would likely be indistinguishable in every way, shape, and form from the real thing. Except all those pesky qualia...
- comfypotato 3y ago
  In the correct physics engine, with the correct models of eyeballs etc., a connectome-based model may experience qualia. It would likely tell us that it experienced qualia. The biggest difference would be that new connections wouldn’t be formed, so it wouldn’t learn.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >In the correct physics engine, with the correct models of eyeballs etc., a connectome-based model may experience qualia. It would likely tell us that it experienced qualia. Sure. It would say it touched water. It would just not actually be wet. Which is something...
    - ChainOfFools 3y ago
      but the corresponding cluster of neurons in a brain isn't actually wetted by the touched water either.
      - coldtea 3y ago
        Yes, but it receives the input from an actual experience of the body it's embodied in - from an actual wet thing. As opposed to being served a simulation of the same. This simulated isolated "brain" is like a heart mechanically assisted to be pounding in a glass jar. Sure, it's still beating, but not as part of its place and environment, in a living being.
        ChainOfFools 3y ago
        Where would you say experience ends, and qualia begins? The way these words are being used seems to make little distinction between them other than one referring to a specific instance of what the other refers to in generalized terms. As for myself I would argue that an experience, and therefore qualia, amount to an accumulated and generalized succession of multiple sensory inputs amalgamated by feedback and hysteresis over time, and informed by the gross structure and constraints of the sensory apparatus they are carried upon.
joe_the_user 3y ago
Models of the human brain would likely be indistinguishable in every way, shape, and form from the real thing. Models that are just a map of connections certainly wouldn't indistinguishable from a human brain. Every single one of the trillions of human neurons is a quite complicated object. Neurons communicate with each other in a number of ways and neuroscience isn't even certain that communication methods have been found.
- comfypotato 3y ago
  This discussion is in the context of the open worm project. It has successfully modeled the neurons of a nematode such that the organism model functions inside a physics engine as would the real organism. Extending this to humans, the neuron models are good enough. I’ve done enough biomedical engineering research in the neuroscience domain to tell you: the problem is imaging the connections, not modeling the neurons.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
ben_w 3y ago
> Models of the human brain would likely be indistinguishable in every way, shape, and form from the real thing. Eventually, but the more I learn, the more I think that's going to be an ethical nightmare to even test. First brain to get the We Are Bob treatment is going to get almost every neurotransmitter slightly wrong, and be tripping as if they're suddenly alternating between ketamine/cocaine, LSD/antipsychotics, and every other pair of opposite impact substances you can think of. I keep hearing doctors saying things like "we don't really know how general anaesthetic works" and "we don't know why sleep and dreams are biologically necessary, only what happens if you miss them" for example, and those feel like important things to understand when building models for simulation.
- comfypotato 3y ago
  The neuron models used in the open worm project… function… That is to say that the complete organism model can learn to swim, which about all the organism is supposed to be able to do. I see what you’re saying though, that human-level function will likely be much more difficult to fine-tune. The ethics of it all are a philosophical wormhole. Ultimately, its “consciousness” would be an image of a real person. I don’t think we would have to worry about it too much. Saying it was truly conscious would be like saying that a video of a person was conscious.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > Saying it was truly conscious would be like saying that a video of a person was conscious. I hope we believe what's true, regardless of what that happens to be — we get bad futures either way, if we think sims are conscious when they're not, or if we think they're not when they are. I've used the film/TV analogy myself, just over a year ago, when it was GPT-3 (and LaMDA behind an NDA) rather than ChatGPT et al: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2022/06/18/lamda-turing-test-sentience/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2022/06/18/lamda-turin...
  - wahahah 3y ago
    A video you can interact with and has its own thoughts, feelings, motivations and such; sure.

minihat 3y ago

What will we do with a completed connectome? Imagine handing a late 1800s scholar a modern processor. Give him a wiring diagram, and a voltmeter. What could he learn from it? The connectome will be a big step, but not the penultimate one, in solving human intelligence.

ecks4ndr0s 3y ago
Maybe trying to reverse engineer it using GNNs until they produce the same output(within some error margin) for various arbitrary inputs? Dunno.
- Retric 3y ago
  I am sure there’s a great deal we can learn about how the brain actually functions from such simulations. However GNNs don’t really capture the underlying mechanisms very well. Our brains use different kinds of Neurons which also use many different neural transmitters, their location in 3D space matters, as do stuff like blood alcohol content, O2 levels, adrenaline, signal propagation delays, etc it’s a stupidly complicated system even above and beyond the number of neurons.
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    Also limiting it to neurons ignores all of the activity and modulatuon that's increasingly being attributed to astrocytes and other CNS "scaffolding"
    - ecks4ndr0s 3y ago
      As many things as possible would have to be taken into account. Maybe a different mathematical formalization is necessary.
chrisweekly 3y ago
"penultimate" means "next-to-last"; I'm thinking you used the wrong word, or are making an obscure point I don't follow.

aperrien 3y ago

Interestingly, the NeuroMechFly project [1] already exists, so integrating the two together may already be under way. At 50 million synapses, a modest gaming PC should be able to run the simulation. I wonder what people will think once they are able to do this at home? [1] https://prelights.biologists.com/highlights/neuromechfly-a-neuromechanical-model-of-adult-drosophila-melanogaster/ https://prelights.biologists.com/highlights/neuromechfly-a-n...

coldtea 3y ago

>Models of the human brain would likely be indistinguishable in every way, shape, and form from the real thing. Except all those pesky qualia...

comfypotato 3y ago
In the correct physics engine, with the correct models of eyeballs etc., a connectome-based model may experience qualia. It would likely tell us that it experienced qualia. The biggest difference would be that new connections wouldn’t be formed, so it wouldn’t learn.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >In the correct physics engine, with the correct models of eyeballs etc., a connectome-based model may experience qualia. It would likely tell us that it experienced qualia. Sure. It would say it touched water. It would just not actually be wet. Which is something...
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    but the corresponding cluster of neurons in a brain isn't actually wetted by the touched water either.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Yes, but it receives the input from an actual experience of the body it's embodied in - from an actual wet thing. As opposed to being served a simulation of the same. This simulated isolated "brain" is like a heart mechanically assisted to be pounding in a glass jar. Sure, it's still beating, but not as part of its place and environment, in a living being.
      - ChainOfFools 3y ago
        Where would you say experience ends, and qualia begins? The way these words are being used seems to make little distinction between them other than one referring to a specific instance of what the other refers to in generalized terms. As for myself I would argue that an experience, and therefore qualia, amount to an accumulated and generalized succession of multiple sensory inputs amalgamated by feedback and hysteresis over time, and informed by the gross structure and constraints of the sensory apparatus they are carried upon.

joe_the_user 3y ago

Models of the human brain would likely be indistinguishable in every way, shape, and form from the real thing. Models that are just a map of connections certainly wouldn't indistinguishable from a human brain. Every single one of the trillions of human neurons is a quite complicated object. Neurons communicate with each other in a number of ways and neuroscience isn't even certain that communication methods have been found.

comfypotato 3y ago
This discussion is in the context of the open worm project. It has successfully modeled the neurons of a nematode such that the organism model functions inside a physics engine as would the real organism. Extending this to humans, the neuron models are good enough. I’ve done enough biomedical engineering research in the neuroscience domain to tell you: the problem is imaging the connections, not modeling the neurons.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

ben_w 3y ago

> Models of the human brain would likely be indistinguishable in every way, shape, and form from the real thing. Eventually, but the more I learn, the more I think that's going to be an ethical nightmare to even test. First brain to get the We Are Bob treatment is going to get almost every neurotransmitter slightly wrong, and be tripping as if they're suddenly alternating between ketamine/cocaine, LSD/antipsychotics, and every other pair of opposite impact substances you can think of. I keep hearing doctors saying things like "we don't really know how general anaesthetic works" and "we don't know why sleep and dreams are biologically necessary, only what happens if you miss them" for example, and those feel like important things to understand when building models for simulation.

comfypotato 3y ago
The neuron models used in the open worm project… function… That is to say that the complete organism model can learn to swim, which about all the organism is supposed to be able to do. I see what you’re saying though, that human-level function will likely be much more difficult to fine-tune. The ethics of it all are a philosophical wormhole. Ultimately, its “consciousness” would be an image of a real person. I don’t think we would have to worry about it too much. Saying it was truly conscious would be like saying that a video of a person was conscious.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > Saying it was truly conscious would be like saying that a video of a person was conscious. I hope we believe what's true, regardless of what that happens to be — we get bad futures either way, if we think sims are conscious when they're not, or if we think they're not when they are. I've used the film/TV analogy myself, just over a year ago, when it was GPT-3 (and LaMDA behind an NDA) rather than ChatGPT et al: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2022/06/18/lamda-turing-test-sentience/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2022/06/18/lamda-turin...
- wahahah 3y ago
  A video you can interact with and has its own thoughts, feelings, motivations and such; sure.