3 ms·

Something you're probably going to be interested in: Whole Brain Emulation. [0] Human intelligence is IMO something that is referred to in pop culture as "emer

Something you're probably going to be interested in: Whole Brain Emulation. [0] Human intelligence is IMO something that is referred to in pop culture as "emergent behavior" [1]. Problem is that you risk building the electronic equivalent of a cargo cult [2]. After all, on a cellular level of a nervous system, what's the difference between what happens in the brain of a chimp and that of a human? How detailed do you have to go to build a platform that can house intelligence? On a philosophical level you kinda end up with a contradiction: is the human brain complex enough to understand/build the complexity of a human brain? Personally I'd be happier if research in this field was a bit more modest. I once read (somewhere in the 90s) that there was a researcher in the U.S. who was mapping every cell's behavior in the fly's "brain". With current tech, it would be feasible to implement that into a simulator and see what pops out. But doing the same for a human brain? Let's first try to come up with a definition for fuzzy meta-sensations such as intelligence and emotions that would translate to computer lingo. [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRB6Qzx9oXs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRB6Qzx9oXs [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

redwood 14y ago
Thanks for this great comment. I'd suggest it's not a contradiction in so far as... we're not talking about one human brain creating another. We're talking about the collaborative work of countless human brains adding on to each other's work. E.g. parallelization of brains is what enables great human strides, and so far seems quite limitless :)
- toemetoch 14y ago
  You're welcome. We're talking about the collaborative work of countless human brains adding on to each other's work. Every bit of progress in humanity is the work of an individual, either working individually or in group. Collaboration still revolves around individual contributions. In a lot of cases (e.g. group discussions and brainstorms) we get the impression that it's the group producing the result, but in reality it's incremental individual work. You're claiming that collaboration can overcome the issue (complex brain understanding it's own complexity). I claim it can't : the ceiling of what can be achieved depends on what the smartest brain (so to speak) can comprehend and tie together. An ant doesn't know how its colony functions, it takes a human to capture that. Same for us, it takes a more evolved brain to understand what makes us tick, we'll only sample aspects of it. A system can never be complex enough to understand its own complexity.

redwood 14y ago

Thanks for this great comment. I'd suggest it's not a contradiction in so far as... we're not talking about one human brain creating another. We're talking about the collaborative work of countless human brains adding on to each other's work. E.g. parallelization of brains is what enables great human strides, and so far seems quite limitless :)

toemetoch 14y ago
You're welcome. We're talking about the collaborative work of countless human brains adding on to each other's work. Every bit of progress in humanity is the work of an individual, either working individually or in group. Collaboration still revolves around individual contributions. In a lot of cases (e.g. group discussions and brainstorms) we get the impression that it's the group producing the result, but in reality it's incremental individual work. You're claiming that collaboration can overcome the issue (complex brain understanding it's own complexity). I claim it can't : the ceiling of what can be achieved depends on what the smartest brain (so to speak) can comprehend and tie together. An ant doesn't know how its colony functions, it takes a human to capture that. Same for us, it takes a more evolved brain to understand what makes us tick, we'll only sample aspects of it. A system can never be complex enough to understand its own complexity.