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>“Fallacy is what people are selling: that human nature can be reduced to [something] that [a] computer algorithm can run! This is a new church!” Actually, the

by nawitus 14y ago

>“Fallacy is what people are selling: that human nature can be reduced to [something] that [a] computer algorithm can run! This is a new church!” Actually, the "new church" is that human nature is something more than physics. Even if Kurzweil is wrong in his predictions, certainly this neuroscientist is also wrong with his metaphysical beliefs that the brain is something more than a mere "machine".

geuis 14y ago
Thank you for summing that up so concisely. I'm going to try to remember the "so you think human nature is something more than physics?" argument for the future.
jessedhillon 14y ago
There's nothing new about that belief.
- ericb 14y ago
  True, but calling materialist views a "church" while holding a mystical viewpoint oneself is a clever bit of doublespeak.
AndrewNCarr 14y ago
That has always been my response to John Searle's Chinese Room [1] thought experiment. The argument boils down to the human consciousness either being magic or not. Magic being something beyond physics. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
jamestc 14y ago
He doesn't suggest that human nature is more than physics, he is saying that consciousness isn't computable. If neural subsystems are a hierarchically arranged and internally generated chaotic dynamic activity, there is the problem of long-term predictions and causal inference. >It may seem paradoxical that a deterministic phenomenon is inherently unpredictable, but in systems that exhibit chaotic behavior, small uncertainties are amplified over time by the nonlinear interaction of a few elements. The upshot is that behavior that is predictable in the short run becomes intrinsically unpredictable in the long term. As a result, physiologists cannot make strict causal inferences from the level of individual neurons to that of neural mass actions, nor from the level of receptor activity to internal dynamics. The causal connection between past and future is cut. http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/freemanwww/manuscripts/IC13/90.html http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/freemanwww/manuscripts/IC13/90.ht...
- Filligree 14y ago
  > Chaotic activity Well yes, the brain is demonstrably chaotic. Why does this matter? If you run a simulation of the brain, you'll soon get different output than the original would output, but does that mean the simulation isn't working? It'll still be intelligent behaviour, even if it isn't the exact same behaviour. It'll still be the same person; if such behavioural differences mattered, then turning up the temperature slightly would make you a different person. Thermal noise bubbles up to the macroscopic level all the time.
- Tichy 14y ago
  That seems irrelevant to making a working brain thingy. We don't want to predict how another given brain will evolve, we want to mimic intelligence. Your brain evolves differently than mine, yet we both are intelligent (I think). I don't need to predict your thoughts to have thoughts of my own. Perhaps the randomness is even necessary because otherwise some situations could never be resolved (like the classic who should go first to go through a door - after you - no, after you...).

by nawitus 14y ago

geuis 14y ago

Thank you for summing that up so concisely. I'm going to try to remember the "so you think human nature is something more than physics?" argument for the future.

jessedhillon 14y ago

There's nothing new about that belief.

ericb 14y ago
True, but calling materialist views a "church" while holding a mystical viewpoint oneself is a clever bit of doublespeak.

AndrewNCarr 14y ago

That has always been my response to John Searle's Chinese Room [1] thought experiment. The argument boils down to the human consciousness either being magic or not. Magic being something beyond physics. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

jamestc 14y ago

He doesn't suggest that human nature is more than physics, he is saying that consciousness isn't computable. If neural subsystems are a hierarchically arranged and internally generated chaotic dynamic activity, there is the problem of long-term predictions and causal inference. >It may seem paradoxical that a deterministic phenomenon is inherently unpredictable, but in systems that exhibit chaotic behavior, small uncertainties are amplified over time by the nonlinear interaction of a few elements. The upshot is that behavior that is predictable in the short run becomes intrinsically unpredictable in the long term. As a result, physiologists cannot make strict causal inferences from the level of individual neurons to that of neural mass actions, nor from the level of receptor activity to internal dynamics. The causal connection between past and future is cut. http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/freemanwww/manuscripts/IC13/90.html http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/freemanwww/manuscripts/IC13/90.ht...

Filligree 14y ago
> Chaotic activity Well yes, the brain is demonstrably chaotic. Why does this matter? If you run a simulation of the brain, you'll soon get different output than the original would output, but does that mean the simulation isn't working? It'll still be intelligent behaviour, even if it isn't the exact same behaviour. It'll still be the same person; if such behavioural differences mattered, then turning up the temperature slightly would make you a different person. Thermal noise bubbles up to the macroscopic level all the time.
Tichy 14y ago
That seems irrelevant to making a working brain thingy. We don't want to predict how another given brain will evolve, we want to mimic intelligence. Your brain evolves differently than mine, yet we both are intelligent (I think). I don't need to predict your thoughts to have thoughts of my own. Perhaps the randomness is even necessary because otherwise some situations could never be resolved (like the classic who should go first to go through a door - after you - no, after you...).