Blue Brain is controversial, and its success is far from assured. Christof Koch of the California Institute of Technology, a scientist who studies consciousness, says the Swiss project provides vital data about how part of the brain works. But he says that Dr. Markram's approach is still missing algorithms, the biological programming that yields higher-level functions...BONUS MEMRISTORS
Despite the challenges, the push to understand, replicate and even re-enact higher behaviors in the brain has become one of the hottest areas of neuroscience. With the help of a $4.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, IBM is working on a separate project with five U.S. universities to build a tiny, low-power microchip that simulates the behavior of one million neurons and ten billion synapses. The goal, says IBM, is to develop brainy computers that can better predict the behavior of complex systems, such as weather or the financial markets.
The Chinese government has provided about $1.5 million to a team at Xiamen University to create artificial-brain robots with microcircuits that evolve, learn and adapt to real-world situations. Similarly, Jeff Krichmar and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, Calif., have built an artificial-brain robot that learns to sharpen its visual perception when moving around in a lab environment, another form of emergent behavior, a form of spontaneous self-organization. And researchers at Sensopac, a project backed by a grant of €6.7 million ($9.3 million) from the European Union, have built part of an artificial mouse brain.
Why? Does that make your life any less of a miracle?Because you could put me in a computer and run me twice, and get the same result
Someone will work out a non-invasive technique for copying a brain. And eventually hardware will be such that it can run a full simulation of a copy. And eventually everyone will backup their brain periodically (once a day? once a minute?). And if they chose, they can have their brain reconstructed biologically upon a messy death.Why would you think that this would be you?
I think you're misinterpreting me.Why would you think that this would be you?Why would you think it wouldn't? I believe that if you made the copy without my dying, then there would be 2 of me, neither with more right to be called me than the other.
The part that I bolded is exactly what I was saying. From it, you seem to be agreeing with me. So, again, given your disagreeing overall tone, I think you are misinterpreting me.Again, that's someone who thinks he or she is you, has all of your memories, et cetera. But your consciousness is still in your body, which is still alive and kicking; your consciousness has not transferred (or expanded) to the new body, has it? Why would it?I believe if there was a copy made (with enough fidelity), then my consciousness would be copied as well. The original version of me would not have a transferred or expanded consciousness to the second me; the original me would continue as before. But the new me would still have it's own consciousness that would be independent of the original me's consciousness and it would diverge from the original me consciousness, as we would have different experiences.
But then you also say that this means that in the case of B being made and A no longer existing that B will not be you. I agree that B will not be A, but B is as much you as A is.You're just using terms differently than I am. You're saying the copy "is" you; in the sense that it is a self-aware entity that thinks it is you and has a right to be treated as you, I agree. But we also agree that the copy has a different consciousness than the original does. They're different people; a hell of a lot in common, but different people. I was using "you" in the sense of referring to one particular self-aware entity - specifically the original. But if you don't want me to use "you" in this sense, fine:
What's the difference in the "self" that exists in/on A and the exact same "self" that exists on B?Do you agree that you have a sense of self?
Tell me specifically, how do you reply to my first hypothetical where you are disassembled and then reassembled with the same atoms in exactly the same relationships? Because if you think that is Other I think you are being sillyYou've been vaporized. You're gone.
I think you are being silly, and if you think it is you then I'd assert that the rest of my (and bort's) argument flows pretty inevitably.Yeah, well, I think that's patently absurd, and I assert that I'm done with this conversation. Goodbye.
Flunkie -- you clearly believe there is some metaphysical component to consciousness which is not expressed by mere matter; I don't believe that, so you're right, there's no point discussing it further.Oh, please. I never said anything about anything metaphysical. In fact, to me, you are the one who seems to be asserting magic: that his consciousness somehow benefits your consciousness after you have been vaporized.
Flunkie -- I asked a simple question.Yes, and I answered it. You haven't done the same for my simple questions.
Isn't all this just destroying a straw clone?No.
Perhaps I can help you here. With respect to present day me, both future clone-me and future me-me are "future-mes." This is where you are getting confused. You're saying "will future me-me think of future clone-me as "me." To which, of course, the answer is "no." Because future me-me and future clone-me will have different lives and different selves. But with respect to present-day-me they are simply "alternate future selves"--in exactly the way that the present-day-me has a hypothetical "alternate self" who is "the me who didn't choose to go to Paris in senior year."Oh, baloney. One of you is the original, and there's no getting around that fact. Whether the original knows he is the original or not -- and make no mistake, he might -- does not change that fact, nor does it change the fact that the original does not see through the copy's eyes, nor vice versa. They don't think sense each other's thoughts; they don't feel each other's feelings; they might not even know each other exist.
What? You think that's circular reasoning?That individual, if dead, does not know that a new copy of him has been reconstituted.That's simply begging the question. But I see that you are determined to do that.
I'm sorry, but this is just ridiculous. You're using "I" to mean something other than your own self-awareness and your own consciousness.No I am not, Bort. Again, if you are alive when your clone is made, you and your clone do not share self-awareness, nor consciousness. He has one self-awareness; he is an "I". You have another. You are another "I".
When you say "the individual, if dead, does not know that a new copy of him has been reconstituted" you are assuming the very thing that is in contention.Do you or do you not agree with me that the original individual, if alive, might not even know that a clone of him has been reconstituted?
Let's ignore the whole body problem and say you just duplicate your brain. Let's say it perfectly emulates you in every way, except we wrote it in computer code instead of neurons to make things especially simple. This brain would act in the exact same way as you would now. I would argue that this computer brain is no more conscious than your email client. It would act the same, but it wouldn't have that ineffable "I am here" to itself, it would just merely have instructions. The machine may be self-modifying, but it wouldn't be an observer. To argue that consciousness would be created purely out of machine instruction (whether it's wet or made out of silicon) is as much faith as any religion out there.But the idea that your own brain is anything more then "instructions" embedded into a network of cells is also in article of faith.
Actually, the differences would be quite measurable, in a very specific and relevant way: Version 1 would be in one location, Version 2 would be in another.Read the whole comment. I was talking about a copy where the original is destroyed (i.e. restore from backup). I addressed the 'two copies' issue in the next paragraph, and I said yes they would be measurably different, but that's not relevant to the 'restore from backup' thing.
I'm saying that with all current knowledge, it is not possible to say that you can program in consciousness in any material (wet or silicon).Presumably, if we got to the point we could do it, then we would know it could be done. And how would we know if it could be done? Well, if we had a program that could pass a Turing test, for example.
And that's the core of my argument, to argue that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon is a religious argument that has no basis in fact. It's just as likely as it is not.This is only true for people who consider "atheism" a religion. After all, if you believe that nothing but the material world exists, then everything you experience must be the result of emergent phenomenon from the material world.
it's logically implausible for anyone that has done any serious programming.Only if they suck at it.
I'll address this, but first I'd like to remind you that this isn't really the way it's supposed to work. You make a claim, you need to provide some proof. Not just vigorous handwaving, proof.Look, either we can or can't do this. Either claim is extraordinary, but people in this thread are saying that if we had a computer capable of simulating the brain it still wouldn't be conscious, and tangentially that if could 'restore a person from backup' that the person would still be dead. Those two claims posit incredible technology, and make statements about that hypothetical world.
It's an extraordinary claim because nobody knows enough about human-level intelligence to know whether or not it can be implemented by the computational model known as a Turing machine. (And any realizable digital computer is really a finite state automaton, not a Turing machine with an infinite tape.) Nobody knows what computational model is required.This is totally wrong. It's known for sure that any computing model can be modeled on a Turing machine. Since the brain is a computing device, we know for sure that it can be modeled on a Turing machine.
So as I see it we have two suppositions:I agree with that.1. The human brain is capable of being implemented as a Turing machineNote not capable is used in its strongest possible sense here. Not implausible, not inefficient, not unlikely to work well, but fundamentally impossible. Halting problem impossible. Violation of thermodynamics impossible.
2. The human brain is not capable of being implemented as a Turing machine
I posit that Occam's razor sides unambiguously on the side of camp #1 and it would require some truly staggering new science for that to change.I wish I knew where your confidence comes from. Certainly John Lucas would disagree with you. He claims to have a proof that a Turing machine cannot represent a human mathematician. I can't vouch for his proof; my computability theory skills are pretty rusty. But the man has fairly impressive credentials. You might want to take a look at his proof.
Thus far the universe has submitted to attempts to model it. We've not come across any processes in the natural world that are incapable of being simulated.What about true random number generation? A Turing machine can only produce sequences of pseudo-random numbers. Pseudo-random number sequences are inherently predictable, and eventually repeat. But a physical quantum process, such as the timing of radioactive decay or thermal noise in a Zener diode, can produce true random numbers. True random number sequences are unpredictable. Cryptologists much prefer to use true random numbers. So there's a counter-example. I don't know whether it's relevant to simulating human-level intelligence, but it might be. And if there's one counter-example, I wouldn't be surprised if there are others.
So yes, strictly we don't know that the mind, consciousness, etc will also submit to the same process because we haven't done it; nevertheless I think it's a mistake to treat the two options as equally probable.I don't believe that a Turing machine is powerful enough to do what we do, so I don't agree with you with regard to your assignment of probabilities. But, for what it's worth, as a research program I think it's reasonable to take it as a hypothesis and see what can be done. I agree with lodurr that we need to do empirical research to find out.
[Penrose's] reasoning is that, while a computer operating within the fixed formal system F can't prove G(F), a human can see its truth, and therefore humans must have mental capabilities beyond those of computers.posted by Bort at 11:29 AM on July 20, 2009
This argument isn't new (it goes back at least to John Lucas in 1961), and logicians and computer scientists have pointed out a major flaw in it. This is that human mathematicians don't use any consistent formal system such as F: they rely on intuition, and they frequently make mistakes. If we grant a computer this same liberty to make mistakes, then it need not operate strictly within F, and there's nothing paradoxical about it being able to 'see' the truth of G(F).
The superiority of analog-life is not so surprising if you are familiar with the mathematical theory of computable numbers and computable functions. Marian Pour-El and Ian Richards, two mathematicians at the University of Minnesota, proved a theorem twenty years ago that says, in a mathematically precise way, that analog computers are more powerful than digital computers. They give examples of numbers that are proved to be non-computable with digital computers but are computable with a simple kind of analog computer. The essential difference between analog and digital computers is that an analog computer deals directly with continuous variables while a digital computer deals only with discrete variables. Our modern digital computers deal only with zeroes and ones. Their analog computer is a classical field propagating though space and time and obeying a linear wave equation. The classical electromagnetic field obeying the Maxwell equations would do the job. Pour-El and Richards show that the field can be focussed on a point in such a way that the strength of the field at that point is not computable by any digital computer, but it can be measured by a simple analog device. The imaginary situation that they consider has nothing to do with biological information. The Pour-El-Richards theorem does not prove that analog-life will survive better in a cold universe. It only makes this conclusion less surprising.that is all!
if there's a yoink1 that's an exact copy of yoink0 and that has a not too different set of memories, it's OK to destroy yoink0(... the context you so helpfully removed my quote from having to do with variance over time...)
Wait a second, where does this "not too different" come from? We have stipulated, have we not, that for the purposes of this thought experiment, the copy is exactly the same as the original--has exactly the same intentions, memories, dreams, aspirations etc. etc. etc. It's simply cheating to bring in a "not too different" standard which was no part of the argument.
OK, I see your one instance where you didn't destroy the original.Want to point out where the word "time" features; let alone the phrase "variance over time"? I'm finding it hard to spot. You say "not too different set of memories"--apparently you were silently assuming that it was time that had allowed for that difference to emerge. I'm not sure what kind of quotation it is that adequately represents people's silent assumptions.
What's your point, exactly? That they both think they're the original? Haven't we already agreed on that? That aunt Margaret thinks they're both original? Haven't we already agreed on that, too?
Let me state this as plainly as possible: They are different individuals. Physically discreet, physically distinct. One is original, the other is not. Do you dispute that?
You will want to state that your "confused perceiver" case makes it irrelevant which is which. In a legalistic framework, you'd be correct; but it would remain a physical fact that one was an origianl and the other a copy, and that one exercised choice (or had choice exercised upon it) to make the other.
Beyond this point, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove, except maybe either: [a] that being yoink1 is somehow just as good as being yoink0, or [b] that if there's a yoink1 that's an exact copy of yoink0 and that has a not too different set of memories, it's OK to destroy yoink0.
I happen to think that's a pretty ethically challenging position, and I don't think you've supported the idea that it's not.
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posted by localroger at 12:28 PM on July 18, 2009