4 ms·

Maybe planar worms have souls... Alternatively, the hypothesis that some of your learning is stored in your nervous system outside of your brain seems compelli

• ldh 13y ago
  I'll take the actual hypothesis over a hand-wave.
• stephengillie 13y ago
  Souls are just programming...
  • Helianthus 13y ago
    Elaborate?
    • stephengillie 13y ago
      What is a soul? Is it what guides a living object when it moves, like a human, dog, or worm? If robots act autonomously, that is, without direct instruction from a living object, do they have souls? What if the robot is merely a plastic frame, a motor attached to wheels, an Arduino with a motor shield, and an ultrasonic Ping distance sensor, but this assemblage can navigate a room without colliding with anything -- does it have a soul? I say yes -- souls are the feedback loops which we have learned or been taught, and they motivate or dissuade us and robots alike. And programming is just teaching, providing instructions that will result in a desired outcome.
      • lolcraft 13y ago
        > What is a soul? Soul, noun: social construct developed over millenia for purposes of group identification, specifically religious; sometimes used for political (crusades, justification of kings), even economical (selling of indulgences' scandal, the Protestant Ethic) purposes. This project didn't at the end obtain as much credibility as other (better built, with more interesting purposes) social constructs such as physics or mathematics; though not for lack of trying, from Plato to Kant and similar scholastics. Now seriously, some terms are very ridiculously loaded, and IMO should be avoided in science. If you want to talk about a "feedback loop" that generates consciousness, go on, be my guest. Now, calling it "soul"... that's just openly inviting every faith in the world to, at best, hijack your theory with pious, well-meaning BS.
        • cristianpascu 13y ago
          Science is actually a very ridiculously loaded term.
          • Helianthus 13y ago
            XD
  • jonsen 13y ago
    ...worms.
  • tragomaskhalos 13y ago
    This soul should be programming, but he's reading HN instead ...
• jonnathanson 13y ago
  "some of your learning is stored in your nervous system outside of your brain seems compelling" The keyword here is "your," as in what kind of organism we're talking about, and what kind of nervous system we're talking about. In organisms like worms, what we'd think of as a brain is obviously a few orders of magnitude less centralized and less specialized than ours. The nervous system plays a much larger role. Ditto starfish, the organisms famous for being brainless (literally). Starfish run entirely on distributed nervous systems, having nothing that passes for a brain. It's very tough to draw comparisons between what happens in the nervous system of a worm and what happens in the nervous system of a human. Even rats, which we've been using for decades as neurological proxies in drug trials, are proving to be less than ideal as analogues for the human nervous system. It turns out that we're so much more advanced than other animals that there's a lot less common ground than traditionally assumed.
  • juliangamble 13y ago
    > It turns out that we're so much more advanced than other animals that there's a lot less common ground than traditionally assumed. Interesting claim. Any chance of a reference for that one?
    • a-priori 13y ago
      I disagree with the term 'more advanced', but there is a huge difference between the invertebrate and vertebrate nervous systems: we have myelin, which insulates the axons and allows signals to travel many times faster. Without myelin, large bodies with centralized nervous systems are not possible. To illustrate the difference, take an example of stubbing your toe. It's a good example because it's unexpected, sudden and originates at the furthest point in your body away from the brain. When you stub your toe, you feel two waves of pain. The first arrives quickly, within about a tenth of a second, and is a sharp stabbing pain. That signal travels by the A-delta fibres, which are myelinated and have a conduction speed of 2 to 30 m/s. The second wave is delayed by 1-2 seconds and is a dull sort of pain. That signal is conveyed by the C fibres, which are unmyelinated and have a conduction speed of <2 m/s. If we did not have myelin, all of the signals to and from the extremities would be similarly delayed. It would be impossible to respond to stimulus or coordinate whole-body actions like walking.
• cristianpascu 13y ago
  One important thing to note here is there is a tendency (inertia?) to find deterministic explanations to observed phenomena. That's mainly because in order to have science, objective science, we need phenomena to be reproducible in a controlled environment. However, psychology (generalize it as much as you will), hardly allows such approach. The psyche is capable of intentional behavior, which by its nature, is not deterministic. Thus you can not make predictions. Thus you can not falsify statements about it in the same way one does with statements in physics. That's why many find the idea of soul (a imaterial substance responsible for our psychological features) repulsive. But this is only because they put forward, as an axiom, the need and the ability to make science with everything and anything. Including with my writing this comment.
• martindale 13y ago
  Extending memory storage onto a device might be more feasible / beneficial. Perhaps, someday, we would be able to begin this process and as the neurons die, let the natural system roll over to the "device".
• loceng 13y ago
  Muscle memory..