Yeah, I'm being mean to all the morons who just a couple years ago were talking about uploading your consciousness to a machine because "the brain's...".
And yet the brain is material and it works. It's just a question of time until we can encode equivalent complexity into matter of one kind or another. Nature is pumping out brains by the trillions.
Encoding equivalent complexity is one thing - operating a conscious mind may be another altogether.
Every mind we know of operates on a continuous, analog, asynchronous substrate, right at the boundary where quantum uncertainty influences every aspect without dominating more orderly behaviors, and that may be necessary for consciousness.
Simulating a conscious mind as software running within a clocked digital environment may be inherently impossible. You might need dedicated hardware for such a thing - nothi
I don't think that the tech is the actual problem. We can simulate quantum effects well enough for every purpose, it "just" tends to cost an exponential amount of time and memory. But if consciousness is, at its base, some kind of quantum effect, then it's just a matter of building a computer that's big enough.
But what if there's am ingredient that's not the sum of the brain's physics? A "soul"?
Imagine a cell phone: you could build one from scratch, but you wouldn't be able to surf the web or make any calls
The problem with this approach is that borders on attributing the limits of scientific understanding into the metaphysical, divine, etc.
Everything was outside of scientific understanding at one time. Science is just the process of us documenting our reality.
If your hypothesis that our brains are hot-wired into some other-dimensional entity can be tested and "proven" than it can become part of our scientific understanding.
If your hypothesis that our brains are hot-wired into some other-dimensional entity can be tested and "proven" than it can become part of our scientific understanding.
In principle yes, but practically I'm afraid it's not that simple.
To test something like this, you'd have to identify a mechanism first. How could the brain communicate?
Our understanding of physics is that there are four - and only four - fundamental interactions: strong, weak, electromagnetic amd gravitational. Strong and weak are intranuclear only. Electromagnetic we can pretty much rule out (our brain doesn't broascast radio waves, we cam measure that). And for gravity, it's too small to make amy significant difference.
So you'd need not only to come up with a minor detail, but an extension to physics as fundamental as a new interaction to begin to speculate. I know, amd I love how, sci-fi plays with new dimensions as if they were mere islands on the Pacific that we "just" need to discover, but the actual truth is that there's a lor more to it: you see, we already know a lot of things, and any wild speculation that has to somewhat fit in the space of we-don't-know-yets doesn't have a lot of space to fit in.
At the same time there are some pretty strong "funny" facts, most prominently the (unusable, but existent) sooky action at distance from quantum entanglement. It's also very tempting to bring the two unknowns we have together ("what is a soul" and "how does quantum entanglement work") and start to speculate. But that's just plainly bad comic book science...
So, in essence: I have again no idea where to take it from there. Science will have to make at least one breakthrough, be it conscious life as an emergence effect of complex computational systems, or new fundamental interactions in physics, etc.
>To test something like this, you'd have to identify a mechanism first. How could the brain communicate?
Eventually - but you're jumping *way* down the road of scientific discovery. Barring brilliant inspiration or a lucky find, what you'd probably really do is:
First: monitor things *very* closely, looking for *any* behavior that's not what you'd expect from a strictly physical brain - anything that would turn out differently depending on whether there was a "soul" involved or not. You don't need to kno
You don't need to know how it works, just to prove whether or not that something is at work that causes things to behave in a manner differently than predicted strictly by the known forces.
The problem is that we're not able to replicate what a "strictly physical" brain is supposed to do. We don't (even) know how that works.
If you can prove that some such thing exists [...] then you can start trying to interfere with it - e.g. cause the brain to resort to operating in a strictly physically predictable manner.
I think the problem here is too complex. And "physical manner" tends to be a real bitch. For example electrons and superconductivity: from the properties of a single electron it's essentially impossible to derive something like superconductivity, but when a whole bunch of electrons come together in a crystal, under specific conditions, "quasi-particle" behavior emerges. Ele
> our brain doesn't purposefully send out EM waves You sure of that? I've never of any experiment even claiming to prove such a thing. Heck, I haven't even heard of any equipment sensitive enough to measure the intricate patterns of EM radiation radiated by our brains, much less the subtle interactions they unavoidably have on the environment, including other such massively complex transmitters nearby.
Now, I wouldn't bet on there being any intentional interactions... but I would bet quite a bit that we'
Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what
one is talking about nor whether what is said is true.
-- Russell
But, but the brain's just complex binary circuitry (Score:2)
I mocked you then and I'm mocking you now.
Re: (Score:1)
And yet the brain is material and it works. It's just a question of time until we can encode equivalent complexity into matter of one kind or another.
Nature is pumping out brains by the trillions.
Re: (Score:2)
Encoding equivalent complexity is one thing - operating a conscious mind may be another altogether.
Every mind we know of operates on a continuous, analog, asynchronous substrate, right at the boundary where quantum uncertainty influences every aspect without dominating more orderly behaviors, and that may be necessary for consciousness.
Simulating a conscious mind as software running within a clocked digital environment may be inherently impossible. You might need dedicated hardware for such a thing - nothi
Re: But, but the brain's just complex binary circu (Score:2)
I don't think that the tech is the actual problem. We can simulate quantum effects well enough for every purpose, it "just" tends to cost an exponential amount of time and memory. But if consciousness is, at its base, some kind of quantum effect, then it's just a matter of building a computer that's big enough.
But what if there's am ingredient that's not the sum of the brain's physics? A "soul"?
Imagine a cell phone: you could build one from scratch, but you wouldn't be able to surf the web or make any calls
Re: (Score:1)
The problem with this approach is that borders on attributing the limits of scientific understanding into the metaphysical, divine, etc.
Everything was outside of scientific understanding at one time. Science is just the process of us documenting our reality.
If your hypothesis that our brains are hot-wired into some other-dimensional entity can be tested and "proven" than it can become part of our scientific understanding.
Re: But, but the brain's just complex binary circ (Score:2)
If your hypothesis that our brains are hot-wired into some other-dimensional entity can be tested and "proven" than it can become part of our scientific understanding.
In principle yes, but practically I'm afraid it's not that simple.
To test something like this, you'd have to identify a mechanism first. How could the brain communicate?
Our understanding of physics is that there are four - and only four - fundamental interactions: strong, weak, electromagnetic amd gravitational. Strong and weak are intranuclear only. Electromagnetic we can pretty much rule out (our brain doesn't broascast radio waves, we cam measure that). And for gravity, it's too small to make amy significant difference.
So you'd need not only to come up with a minor detail, but an extension to physics as fundamental as a new interaction to begin to speculate. I know, amd I love how, sci-fi plays with new dimensions as if they were mere islands on the Pacific that we "just" need to discover, but the actual truth is that there's a lor more to it: you see, we already know a lot of things, and any wild speculation that has to somewhat fit in the space of we-don't-know-yets doesn't have a lot of space to fit in.
At the same time there are some pretty strong "funny" facts, most prominently the (unusable, but existent) sooky action at distance from quantum entanglement. It's also very tempting to bring the two unknowns we have together ("what is a soul" and "how does quantum entanglement work") and start to speculate. But that's just plainly bad comic book science...
So, in essence: I have again no idea where to take it from there. Science will have to make at least one breakthrough, be it conscious life as an emergence effect of complex computational systems, or new fundamental interactions in physics, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
>To test something like this, you'd have to identify a mechanism first. How could the brain communicate?
Eventually - but you're jumping *way* down the road of scientific discovery. Barring brilliant inspiration or a lucky find, what you'd probably really do is:
First: monitor things *very* closely, looking for *any* behavior that's not what you'd expect from a strictly physical brain - anything that would turn out differently depending on whether there was a "soul" involved or not. You don't need to kno
Re: (Score:2)
You don't need to know how it works, just to prove whether or not that something is at work that causes things to behave in a manner differently than predicted strictly by the known forces.
The problem is that we're not able to replicate what a "strictly physical" brain is supposed to do. We don't (even) know how that works.
If you can prove that some such thing exists [...] then you can start trying to interfere with it - e.g. cause the brain to resort to operating in a strictly physically predictable manner.
I think the problem here is too complex. And "physical manner" tends to be a real bitch. For example electrons and superconductivity: from the properties of a single electron it's essentially impossible to derive something like superconductivity, but when a whole bunch of electrons come together in a crystal, under specific conditions, "quasi-particle" behavior emerges. Ele
Re: (Score:2)
> our brain doesn't purposefully send out EM waves
You sure of that? I've never of any experiment even claiming to prove such a thing. Heck, I haven't even heard of any equipment sensitive enough to measure the intricate patterns of EM radiation radiated by our brains, much less the subtle interactions they unavoidably have on the environment, including other such massively complex transmitters nearby.
Now, I wouldn't bet on there being any intentional interactions... but I would bet quite a bit that we'