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I'm just going to stick this out there because I'm a futurist and it's my role to share with others what I'm thinking about. What I share may be flat out wrong

I'm just going to stick this out there because I'm a futurist and it's my role to share with others what I'm thinking about. What I share may be flat out wrong, scary, half assed, or appear to be crazy. So be it. We've advanced a lot in the last 100 years. We're starting to see a bigger picture forming with the advent of compute and networking capabilities. Combining simple elements of these basics give rise to surprising and interesting behaviors. See "Twitch Plays Pokemon": http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57619058-93/twitch-plays-pokemon-is-now-a-fight-for-the-soul-of-the-internet/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57619058-93/twitch-plays-po... as an example of suprising behavior. The more we look in detail at the universe around us, the more puzzling it gets. Prime numbers spirals are unexplained. The two slit experiments results indicate the observer plays a part in collapsing a particle's probability wave. The effects of dark matter could be a result of parallel universes. You couldn't make up weirder shit if you tried. It's not a huge leap of logic to assume some parts of our brain operate at a quantum level. Given that first statement comes to a truthful fruition, I don't think it would be entirely unreasonable to assume AI will do so as well. Given computers already use some quantum properties, it's also reasonable to expect advancement in AI lies in this direction. When they announced Google was getting a D-Wave computer, I got really interested. Granted, they know beans about how it works (and whether or not it actually works at all) but it's still crazy interesting to consider. As I said, I could be wrong or crazy. Or both.

carlob 13y ago
> It's not a huge leap of logic to assume some parts of our brain operate at a quantum level. To the best of our knowledge it is still a pretty large leap of logic.
- kordless 13y ago
  It's definitely a leap, but there's a decent amount of information (not proof however) on the subject laying around. We still don't understand how the brain brings about consciousness. I guess I should say it's not a huge leap to assume it has something to do with other things we also don't understand. Given quantum effect and number theory still elude us in areas, it's a decent approach to assume they might be related. I've debugged problems in my code that, at first glance, appear to be unrelated to each other. Given something is slightly off in one area isn't a proof something of in another area is related, but it's a good place to start looking.
  - carlob 13y ago
    As far as I know there is a decent amount of information against the fact that brains are quantum computers. On the other hand there is a talk by Hinton on youtube [1] that sheds interesting light on some variants of deep learning and the way the brain uses (classical) noise. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DleXA5ADG78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DleXA5ADG78
zcarter 13y ago
I find Terrence McKenna's argument that consciousness is demonstrably entangled in the material world at a quantum mechanical, atomic level convincing. To summarize, it is known that two similar chemical compounds, differing only in the placement of a single atom on the carbon ring structure of a molecule, when administered in doses at the order of micrograms will either be psychoactive and result in a massive disruption to the human subject's baseline consciousness or be inert beyond our ability to measure an effect.
- XorNot 13y ago
  That provides precisely no evidence that consciousness is somehow related to events on the quantum level. We know why drugs have the effects they do - because the brain has receptors specifically calibrated to accept or reject molecular inputs. But those inputs are chemical, not quantum - they are not indeterminate, they are lynchpins in chains of chemical reactions. You omit that if you give a much larger dose of the same thing you'd kill a person, and a smaller dose might fall below any threshold of activity at all. And for that matter, a microgram is a huge quantity of matter.

carlob 13y ago

> It's not a huge leap of logic to assume some parts of our brain operate at a quantum level. To the best of our knowledge it is still a pretty large leap of logic.

kordless 13y ago
It's definitely a leap, but there's a decent amount of information (not proof however) on the subject laying around. We still don't understand how the brain brings about consciousness. I guess I should say it's not a huge leap to assume it has something to do with other things we also don't understand. Given quantum effect and number theory still elude us in areas, it's a decent approach to assume they might be related. I've debugged problems in my code that, at first glance, appear to be unrelated to each other. Given something is slightly off in one area isn't a proof something of in another area is related, but it's a good place to start looking.
- carlob 13y ago
  As far as I know there is a decent amount of information against the fact that brains are quantum computers. On the other hand there is a talk by Hinton on youtube [1] that sheds interesting light on some variants of deep learning and the way the brain uses (classical) noise. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DleXA5ADG78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DleXA5ADG78

zcarter 13y ago

I find Terrence McKenna's argument that consciousness is demonstrably entangled in the material world at a quantum mechanical, atomic level convincing. To summarize, it is known that two similar chemical compounds, differing only in the placement of a single atom on the carbon ring structure of a molecule, when administered in doses at the order of micrograms will either be psychoactive and result in a massive disruption to the human subject's baseline consciousness or be inert beyond our ability to measure an effect.

XorNot 13y ago
That provides precisely no evidence that consciousness is somehow related to events on the quantum level. We know why drugs have the effects they do - because the brain has receptors specifically calibrated to accept or reject molecular inputs. But those inputs are chemical, not quantum - they are not indeterminate, they are lynchpins in chains of chemical reactions. You omit that if you give a much larger dose of the same thing you'd kill a person, and a smaller dose might fall below any threshold of activity at all. And for that matter, a microgram is a huge quantity of matter.