4 ms·
You can simulate a human brain on pen and paper too.
by School-Cotton 11mo ago
You can simulate a human brain on pen and paper too.
- andrepd 11mo agoIt's an open problem whether you can or not.
- space_fountain 11mo agoIt’s not that open. We can simulate smaller system of neurons just fine, we can simulate chemistry. There might be something beyond that in our brains for some reason, but it sees doubtful right now
- phantasmish 11mo agoOur brains actually do something, may be the difference. They're a thing happening, not a description of a thing happening. Whatever that something that it actually does in the real, physical world is produces the cogito in cogito, ergo sum and I doubt you can get it just by describing what all the subatomic particles are doing, any more than a computer or pen-and-paper simulated hurricane can knock your house down, no matter how perfectly simulated.
- thrance 11mo agoYou're arguing for the existence of a soul, for dualism. Nothing wrong with that, except we have never been able to measure it, and have never had to use it to explain any phenomenon of the brain's working. The brain follows the rules of physics, like any other objects of the material world. A pen and paper simulation of a brain would also be "a thing happening" as you put it. You have to explain what is the magical ingredient that makes the brain's computations impossible to replicate. You could connect your brain simulation to an actual body, and you'd be unable to tell the difference with a regular human, unless you crack it open.
- phantasmish 11mo ago> You're arguing for the existence of a soul, for dualism. I'm not. You might want me to be, but I'm very, very much not.
- terminalshort 11mo agoWhy are the electric currents moving in a GPU any less of a "thing happening" than the firing of the neurons in your brain? What you are describing here is a claim that the brain is fundamentally supernatural.
- phantasmish 11mo agoThinking that making scribbles that we interpret(!!!) as perfectly describing a functioning consciousness and its operation, on a huge stack of paper, would manifest consciousness in any way whatsoever (hell, let's say we make it an automated flip-book, too, so it "does something"), but if you made the scribbles slightly different it wouldn't work(!?!? why, exactly, not ?!?!), is what's fundamentally supernatural. It's straight-up Bronze Age religion kinds of stuff (which fits—the tech elite is full of that kind of shit, like mummification—er, I mean—"cryogenic preservation", millenarian cults er, I mean The Singularity, et c) Of course a GPU involves things happening. No amount of using it to describe a brain operating gets you an operating brain, though. It's not doing what a brain does. It's describing it. (I think this is actually all somewhat tangential to whether LLMs "can think" or whatever, though—but the "well of course they might think because if we could perfectly describe an operating brain, that would also be thinking" line of argument often comes up, and I think it's about as wrong-headed as a thing can possibly be, a kind of deep "confusing the map for the territory" error; see also comments floating around this thread offhandedly claiming that the brain "is just physics"—like, what? That's the cart leading the horse! No! Dead wrong!)
- hackinthebochs 10mo agoComputation doesn't care about its substrate. A simulation of a computation is just a computation.
- ehsanu1 11mo agoDoing something merely requires I/O. Brains wouldn't be doing much without that. A sufficiently accurate simulation of a fundamentally computational process is really just the same process.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- phantasmish 11mo agoThe simulation isn't an operating brain. It's a description of one. What it "means" is imposed by us, what it actually is, is a shitload of graphite marks on paper or relays flipping around or rocks on sand or (pick your medium). An arbitrarily-perfect simulation of a burning candle will never, ever melt wax. An LLM is always a description. An LLM operating on a computer is identical to a description of it operating on paper (if much faster).
- gnull 11mo agoWhat makes the simulation we live in special compared to the simulation of a burning candle that you or I might be running? That simulated candle is perfectly melting wax in its own simulation. Duh, it won't melt any in ours, because our arbitrary notions of "real" wax are disconnected between the two simulatons.
- hnfong 11mo agoThey do have a valid subtle point though. If we don't think the candle in a simulated universe is a "real candle", why do we consider the intelligence in a simulated universe possibly "real intelligence"? Being a functionalist ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_mind) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_m... ) myself, I don't know the answer on the top of my head.
- phantasmish 11mo agoI think the core trouble is that it's rather difficult to simulate anything at all without requiring a human in the loop before it "works". The simulation isn't anything (well, it's something, but it's definitely not what it's simulating) until we impose that meaning on it. (We could, of course, levy a similar accusation at reality, but folks tend to avoid that because it gets uselessly solipsistic in a hurry) A simulation of a tree growing (say) is a lot more like the idea of love than it is... a real tree growing. Making the simulation more accurate changes that not a bit.
- hackinthebochs 10mo ago
- an0malous 11mo agoParent said replicate, as in deterministically
- pton_xd 11mo agoSo the brain is a mathematical artifact that operates independently from time? It just happens to be implemented using physics? Somehow I doubt it.
- thrance 11mo agoThe brain follows the laws of physics. The laws of physics can be closely approximated by mathematical models. Thus, the brain can be closely approximated by mathematical models.
- palmotea 11mo ago> You can simulate a human brain on pen and paper too. That's an assumption, though. A plausible assumption, but still an assumption. We know you can execute an LLM on pen and paper, because people built them and they're understood well enough that we could list the calculations you'd need to do. We don't know enough about the human brain to create a similar list, so I don't think you can reasonably make a stronger statement than "you could probably simulate..." without getting ahead of yourself.
- hnfong 11mo agoThis is basically the Church-Turing thesis and one of the motivations of using tape(paper) and an arbitrary alphabet in the Turing machine model. It's been kinda discussed to oblivion in the last century, interesting that it seems people don't realize the "existing literature" and repeat the same arguments (not saying anyone is wrong).
- terminalshort 11mo agoI can make a claim much stronger than "you could probably" The counterclaim here is that the brain may not obey physical laws that can be described by mathematics. This is a "5G causes covid" level claim. The overwhelming burden of proof is on you.
- kipchak 11mo agoConsider for example Orch OR theory. If it or something like it were to be accurate, the brain would not "obey physical laws that can be described by mathematics".
- bondarchuk 11mo ago>Consider for example Orch OR theory Yes, or what about leprechauns?
- kipchak 10mo agoOrch OR is probably wrong, but the broader point is that we still don’t know which physical processes are necessary for cognition. Until we do, claims of definitive brain simulability are premature.