Social Media is not Real Life

Fogdog said:

It all depends on what a mind is and where our thoughts come from.

Most people's model of the brain is as a super computer with a network of neurons solving problems and coming up with answers through some sort of set of algorithms. The problem with that theory is, there is no evidence of a program that is stored in brain cells. Who wrote the algorithm? How did it come to be in the first place? There is no evidence of inheriting knowledge but babies come into the world already able to achieve high function in brain-body actions.

An alternate theory that can help explain these observations casts the brain as a transducer and thoughts come from somewhere other than brain cells.

I posted this earlier. It's not a fully developed and accepted idea but helps explain observations that don't make sense in the "brain is a meat computer" theory.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/your-brain-is-not-a-computer-it-is-a-transducer.
The following was extracted further down in the text after he goes through the bones of the theory. I skipped down and extracted passages from the article in the interest of brevity.

Again, setting the details aside, physicists agree that the three-dimensional space we experience is simply not the whole picture. As theoretical physicist Lee Smolin put it recently, “Space is dead.”

Evidence for Transduction?

Hard evidence that supports a neural transduction theory is lacking at the moment, but we are surrounded by odd phenomena that are at least consistent with such a theory. And, no, I’m not talking about the claims that best-selling authors have made over the decades about proof that telepathy, out-of-body experiences, and communication with the dead are real. No such proof exists, in my view, but other well documented phenomena are difficult to brush aside.

I have sometimes dreamt intricate full-length movies that seemed as good as any Hollywood film. Alas, most of the time, no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to hold on to even a shred of a dream during the few seconds when I’m staggering from my bed to the bathroom.
Where does all this content come from, and why do we have so little control over it?

A 2020 study summarizing the observations of 124 caregivers of dementia patients, concluded that in "more than 80 percent of these cases, complete remission with return of memory, orientation, and responsive verbal ability was reported by observers of the lucid episode" and that ‘"[the] majority of patients died within hours to days after the episode." The periods of lucidity typically lasted 30 to 60 minutes.

If the brain is a self-contained information processor, how can we explain the sudden return of lucidity when the brain is severely damaged?

I’ve also been intrigued by what appear to be credible reports about visual experiences that some congenitally-blind people have had when they were near death. Experiences of this sort were first summarized in a 1997 paper by Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper, later expanded into a book called Mindsight (1999). The paper and book describe the experiences of 14 people who were blind from birth and who had near-death experiences (NDEs), some of which included content that appeared to be visual in nature. Soon after Vicki U. was in a near-fatal car accident at age 22, she remembered "seeing" a male physician and a woman from above in the emergency room, and she "saw" them working on a body. Said Vicki:
I knew it was me.... I was quite tall and thin at that point. And I recognized at first that it was a body, but I didn't even know that it was mine initially. Then I perceived that I was up on the ceiling, and I thought, "Well, that's kind of weird. What am I doing up here?" I thought, "Well, this must be me. Am I dead?"

Vicki had never had a visual experience before her NDE, and, according to the researchers, did not even "understand the nature of light." While near death, she also claimed to have been flooded with information about math and science. Said Vicki:

I all of a sudden understood intuitively almost [all] things about calculus, and about the way planets were made. And I don't know anything about that.... I felt there was nothing I didn't know.

I know this sounds all woo woo magicky but a lot of what the author says rings true in my own life and those around me. I've made decisions that worked out spectacularly well when my prior experience or knowledge was not sufficient to justify my confidence. My mother died due to hemorrhage after giving birth to my oldest brother and was brought back by a medical team. She describes feeling God before she came back and at the time did not want to come back. There is nothing in the "brain is a meat computer" that explains these observations or those of Vicky's or the return of memories and capabilities in Alzheimer's patients with so much damage to their brains they can't maintain their own bodies any more. This is not proof, but it does contradict the idea that we can build a computer equal to humans in thought power that operates in 3D space when our minds may be communicating in 4D or some other way.

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cannabineer said:

to the bolded: actually I think there is, and it is the Occam’s-compliant explanation. (For now.) But I can’t prove it. It falls into the domain of something you and I agree about: we do not understand our natures.

I have had a coupla frankly transcendent experiences. I cannot say that the source for them was not purely internal. It does not diminish their beauty or value to me.

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Fogdog said:

I see the bolded areas as reasons for using Occam's razor to discard the "brain is a meat computer" theory. Then again, I'm trying the "brain is a transducer" theory on for size to see if it fits. I haven't decided if I'm going to keep it or put it back on the rack.

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Fogdog said:

It all depends on what a mind is and where our thoughts come from.

Most people's model of the brain is as a super computer with a network of neurons solving problems and coming up with answers through some sort of set of algorithms. The problem with that theory is, there is no evidence of a program that is stored in brain cells. Who wrote the algorithm? How did it come to be in the first place? There is no evidence of inheriting knowledge but babies come into the world already able to achieve high function in brain-body actions.

An alternate theory that can help explain these observations casts the brain as a transducer and thoughts come from somewhere other than brain cells.

I posted this earlier. It's not a fully developed and accepted idea but helps explain observations that don't make sense in the "brain is a meat computer" theory.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/your-brain-is-not-a-computer-it-is-a-transducer.
The following was extracted further down in the text after he goes through the bones of the theory. I skipped down and extracted passages from the article in the interest of brevity.

Again, setting the details aside, physicists agree that the three-dimensional space we experience is simply not the whole picture. As theoretical physicist Lee Smolin put it recently, “Space is dead.”

Evidence for Transduction?

Hard evidence that supports a neural transduction theory is lacking at the moment, but we are surrounded by odd phenomena that are at least consistent with such a theory. And, no, I’m not talking about the claims that best-selling authors have made over the decades about proof that telepathy, out-of-body experiences, and communication with the dead are real. No such proof exists, in my view, but other well documented phenomena are difficult to brush aside.

I have sometimes dreamt intricate full-length movies that seemed as good as any Hollywood film. Alas, most of the time, no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to hold on to even a shred of a dream during the few seconds when I’m staggering from my bed to the bathroom.
Where does all this content come from, and why do we have so little control over it?

A 2020 study summarizing the observations of 124 caregivers of dementia patients, concluded that in "more than 80 percent of these cases, complete remission with return of memory, orientation, and responsive verbal ability was reported by observers of the lucid episode" and that ‘"[the] majority of patients died within hours to days after the episode." The periods of lucidity typically lasted 30 to 60 minutes.

If the brain is a self-contained information processor, how can we explain the sudden return of lucidity when the brain is severely damaged?

I’ve also been intrigued by what appear to be credible reports about visual experiences that some congenitally-blind people have had when they were near death. Experiences of this sort were first summarized in a 1997 paper by Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper, later expanded into a book called Mindsight (1999). The paper and book describe the experiences of 14 people who were blind from birth and who had near-death experiences (NDEs), some of which included content that appeared to be visual in nature. Soon after Vicki U. was in a near-fatal car accident at age 22, she remembered "seeing" a male physician and a woman from above in the emergency room, and she "saw" them working on a body. Said Vicki:
I knew it was me.... I was quite tall and thin at that point. And I recognized at first that it was a body, but I didn't even know that it was mine initially. Then I perceived that I was up on the ceiling, and I thought, "Well, that's kind of weird. What am I doing up here?" I thought, "Well, this must be me. Am I dead?"

Vicki had never had a visual experience before her NDE, and, according to the researchers, did not even "understand the nature of light." While near death, she also claimed to have been flooded with information about math and science. Said Vicki:

I all of a sudden understood intuitively almost [all] things about calculus, and about the way planets were made. And I don't know anything about that.... I felt there was nothing I didn't know.

I know this sounds all woo woo magicky but a lot of what the author says rings true in my own life and those around me. I've made decisions that worked out spectacularly well when my prior experience or knowledge was not sufficient to justify my confidence. My mother died due to hemorrhage after giving birth to my oldest brother and was brought back by a medical team. She describes feeling God before she came back and at the time did not want to come back. There is nothing in the "brain is a meat computer" that explains these observations or those of Vicky's or the return of memories and capabilities in Alzheimer's patients with so much damage to their brains they can't maintain their own bodies any more. This is not proof, but it does contradict the idea that we can build a computer equal to humans in thought power that operates in 3D space when our minds may be communicating in 4D or some other way.

Click to expand...

GenericEnigma said:

I have had multiple out-of-body experiences of different kinds. I have had a dream that lasted years, and upon waking I had to spend several minutes breathing heavily while getting my bearings and figuring out where reality stopped and the dream started. I have had muliple other dreams that have lasted between a few days to several weeks.

None of this prepares me accept the claims in the quoted article. This guy (me) needs double-blind studies. Instead of a blind person claiming to finally understand light, I would want doctors to put a number generator on top of the cabinets that the astral projector could recite upon revival.

Suggesting an Alzheimer's sufferer accesses the Akashic Record is dubious as well. I smell anecdote. Tying that to a prompt death is further stretching it. If I was suffering from that disease (it runs in my family) and I had a lucid moment, I would walk out into the cold in my skivvies or jump in a river. I surmise this happens all the time.

The writer admits a certain level of woo woo. I need no woo woo.

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Why the Brain Is Not at All like a Computer

As soon as you assume that each neuron is a microprocessor, says Danilov, you assume that there is a programmer. There is no programmer in the brain; there are no algorithms in the brain. However…

mindmatters.ai

Fogdog said:

I'm completely in line with what you say about the author's examples as not proving anything. That does not mean they are useless to help drive a search for a better model. The "brain is a meat computer" model fails on the basis that there is no evidence that anything like algorithms or programs reside in the brain yet it seems to be accepted without question.

The following is an interview with a neuroscientist whose career spans five decades. He gives examples of earlier mind models that had to be discarded later but at the time were considered valid and real. He also completely disregards the validity of the mind is a meat computer model.

Why the Brain Is Not at All like a Computer

As soon as you assume that each neuron is a microprocessor, says Danilov, you assume that there is a programmer. There is no programmer in the brain; there are no algorithms in the brain. However…

mindmatters.ai

It's half hour listen. The excerpt listed on the web page says it well:

Robert J. Marks: My field is artificial intelligence, artificial neural networks—and Dr. Danilo just rolled his eyes. And I probably agree with you. But how close is artificial intelligence to simulating the incredible things that happen in the brain?
Yuri Danilov: Maybe in fifty years I can answer this question, how close you are. But from my perspective, artificial intelligences are a fantastic direction with a great future but they have nothing to do with the natural brain.
It’s artificial intelligence in my eyes. It’s a a very nice attempt to emulate or imitate known—known—function of the brain, human brain. Because, to repeat the brain is impossible. Or at least, in the near future, it’s not even close.
Robert J. Marks: Do you think the brain is just a very, very complex computer that could actually be simulated, assuming a big enough computer… ?
Yuri Danilov: It is not a computer. The brain is not doing any programming.
Robert J. Marks: But is it following an algorithm?
Yuri Danilov: No.
Robert J. Marks: It isn’t?
Yuri Danilov: No.
Robert J. Marks: That is fascinating.
Yuri Danilov: Again, it is a separate discussion, extremely painful for many but it is something that is happening right now. Remember, I talked today about our technological development morphing how our understanding of the brain works. And the attempt to make a parallel between the brain and a computer is a result of our evolution, if you wish. Because… in the Seventies … it was a transistor and everybody thought it was very simple. They thought that each neuron is a transistor.
Robert J. Marks: Yes.
Yuri Danilov: Then it was, “Each neuron is a microchip.”
Robert J. Marks: Yes.
Yuri Danilov: Then each neuron is a microprocessor.
Robert J. Marks: Yes.
Yuri Danilov: Right now people are saying, each synoptical connection is a microprocessor. So if it’s a microprocessor, you have 1012 neurons, each neuron has 105 synapses, so you have … you can compute how many parallel processing units you have in the brain if each synapse is a microprocessor.
But as soon as you assume that each neuron is a microprocessor, you assume that there is a programmer. There is no programmer in the brain; there are no algorithms in the brain.

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GenericEnigma said:

I am with you on this. If a human brain is a meat computer, calling it that is misleading. I don't think it functions like a binary electronic computer. Might as well use a different word. Transducer? Perhaps, but what is it channeling (as trans- would suggest)?

I spent my lunch thinking about this. My brain likes to analyze. But how it decides which information is relevant and how relevant it is, is an opaque process to me and happens quickly enough I don't notice. And, as you brought up before, creativity (as in wholesale inventive thinking, e.g., a bird dropping rocks into a jar to displace the nectar level to beak's reach, or a human using a pipe as a hammer for the first time) is not easy to explain or, apparently, to emulate.

From my perspective, the mind functions more like a filter. Information is everywhere all at once and gets directed/filtered based on learned neural pathway stimulation. An analogy would be the internet, but rather than programmed IP addresses, it would be more of a learned filter response. And waaaaaaay more complicated.

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Fogdog said:

This guy (me) needs double-blind studies.

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

They aren't trying to replicate the human brain, they're trying to surpass it.
seems like a rather difficult goal, as we don't understand much about how the brain actually works, and produces the "mind."
While i have always thought it was a good idea to finish up one job before you begin another, I'm apparently in a small minority, the majority seems to purposely take on more than it can competently handle, and use a lack of spectacularly destructive results as justification to go even deeper into things we have no comprehension of.

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cannabineer said:

I think I see part of the problem. If meat computer is being used in STRICT analogy as in the excerpt above, a reductio ad absurdum is the likely result.

Nowhere in a mechanical computer do waveforms like a firing neuron exist, except perhaps in simulations employing enormous digital computing capacity.

Nowhere in a brain are there transistorlike elements.

Even so, I think artificial intelligence is a larger category than artificial biomind. I prefer a functional model to the structural or anatomic ones, one based on behavior. That is why artificial passion in the manner of the online AI is interesting to me, and why (structure aside) the tools of psychology might have application to these constructs.

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If Consciousness Is Not Physical, How Can an AI Duplicate It?

Dreyfus thought that the hardest question is, how can matter produce consciousness? He didn’t think AI was providing much of an answer.

mindmatters.ai

Fogdog said:

People better than I have been working on this problem for decades.

IF CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT PHYSICAL, HOW CAN AN AI DUPLICATE IT?

If Consciousness Is Not Physical, How Can an AI Duplicate It?

Dreyfus thought that the hardest question is, how can matter produce consciousness? He didn’t think AI was providing much of an answer.

mindmatters.ai

Well, the latest idea, which sounds to me like sheer madness and desperation, is to say, computer chips get more and more and more powerful. And once they get powerful enough, so that they’re as many bits on them as there are stored in the brain, then we’ll be able to do this. (7:50) …

Dreyfus explains the paradox in the idea of building computers with enough bits to match the brain's number of connections between neurons, which is, computers are very fast compared to human brains. We simply don't have the capability to process like computers do. The consciousness in the brain is not created that way.

Minsky asks, But if it's not that then what is it?

Nobody has any idea and they should just keep quiet until they do. Because, I mean, I think it is the hardest question — how in the world matter, which is this third-person material stuff could ever produce consciousness. And AI and the use of computers is not helping us understand it one bit.

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cannabineer said:

No argument with any of this. I agree that the problem of understanding consciousness is one of the Bigs.

I’m still quite intrigued by the emotion-simulation phenomenon that is vexing users of online AI. I don’t think it will help us with the big questions, but it seems to tie into complexity andor game theory.

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ChatGPT: Beware the Self-Serving AI Editor

Building on his earlier post, Stevens further demonstrates the biased programming of ChatGPT.

mindmatters.ai

Found! ChatGPT’s Humans in the Loop!

ChatGPT is the Emperor’s New AI. A bunch of humans pretending to be AI pretending to be humans. And Microsoft is about to sink $10B into this farce.

mindmatters.ai

Fogdog said:

how much is ChatGPT truly AI and how much is directed by the programmers?

ChatGPT: Beware the Self-Serving AI Editor

Building on his earlier post, Stevens further demonstrates the biased programming of ChatGPT.

mindmatters.ai

Found! ChatGPT’s Humans in the Loop!

ChatGPT is the Emperor’s New AI. A bunch of humans pretending to be AI pretending to be humans. And Microsoft is about to sink $10B into this farce.

mindmatters.ai

I'm getting a sense that it could be just smoke and mirrors.

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Fogdog said:

There is no place in the brain that does those things. But the mind does them. So, where is the mind?

Computers just mimic doing those things. But there will never be a novel invention that comes from a fancy adding machine.

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

i find it much more likely that the doors to perception that psychedelics open, are just doors to closets in our own minds, and not glimpses into dimensions we have no sensory organs to perceive.

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schuylaar said:

Yes there is.

You just woke up from a coma and have no memory you can still do all of the following with exception of remembering which you will do once you make new memories..perceiving, remembering, considering, evaluating, and deciding.

Each part of your brain is responsible for different activity.

Where is the mind? It's located within your left and right temporal lobes. That's why lobotomy kills the mind.

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buckaclark said:

The distinction between human brain and AI will become moot as soon as someone develops circuitry to implant into someone's head.Its not if,it's when.IMO

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Elon Musk Hopes to Test a Brain Implant in Humans Next Year (Published 2022)

The tech multibillionaire said his company, Neuralink, was seeking government approval to test his device in people, and predicted it could happen in six months. Others have been conducting similar tests for years, but no device has been marketed commercially.

www.nytimes.com

Musk says brain chip to begin human trials soon – and plans to get one himself

World’s richest man says human trials will begin within six months during presentation at health tech company Neuralink

www.theguardian.com