Who Owns Ideas?

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

"more deterministic"? Something is either deterministic or it isn't. Is the human brain working in a deterministic fashion? I think yes, this seems to be a deterministic universe on the macro scale, our brains and even neurons firing are macro-scale structures. Complexity does not mean it ultimately isn't deterministic in nature.

Computers 'evolved' from the von Neumann architecture, which is based on sequential processing and execution of explicit instructions. On the other hand, the origins of artificial neural networks are based on efforts to model information processing in biological systems, which may rely largely on parallel processing as well as implicit instructions based on recognition of patterns of 'sensory' input from external sources. In other words, at its very heart a neural network is a complex statistical processor (as opposed to being tasked to sequentially process and execute) which might be a good way to model how humans go about things internally.

We'll see where it goes, perhaps neural nets will unlock some of the answers, and perhaps we'll need to look elsewhere. I'm on the hard determinist side. No magic dust in the human brain.

In statistics there are levels of deterministic. A computer will reveal predictable results from someone that knows the algorithm while we think generally human behavior is somewhat predictable then someone goes off the deepend and does something total unpredicted.

We are just beginning to get a fairly good understand of the hardware we call a brain and how it is hooked together and how the neurons and other parts go together but we haven't a clue as to how thinking is done. Abstract thinking does not flow automatically out of the hardware connections.

Dale

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by axel77

The only other option IMHO you can go is to say, okay the output does not come from the input, but from another ethernal plane. From souls, from specific spiritual type that is special to the human as human, and cannot be duplicated by any other electronic. This is an opinion I don't share, but I accept as religious freedom. But it doesn't seem this is the option you went for either.

Just because we don't understand exactly how the brain works, I don't know where you say output should come from if not from input, and not from an ethernal out-of-this-world being like the soul.

Oh... so what you said I call "magic" is what you call "God." And as you say... just because we don't know how the brain works, that doesn't mean it is not capable of producing output that is more than its input. But ascribing that to a "soul" or "God" is simply selling the brain short... first it's a "meat calculator," and now you're calling it a "receiver" for Divine Input. Nope, I don't buy that, either.

I guess you just can't accept the possibility that the brain may be capable of things beyond our present understanding? I don't have a problem accepting that premise at all, because I do understand how little we really know about biology and psychology.

[axel77]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I guess you just can't accept the possibility that the brain may be capable of things beyond our present understanding? I don't have a problem accepting that premise at all.

Yes I put this as the only options I can see:
* Either the brain is a data processing device (altough pretty sophistacted, and built on pretty different "paradigm" than the Von Neuman Computers we have standing in our homes.)
* Or the brain is a devine reception antenna.

I don't see what else could be, if you have a third option please elaborate.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by axel77

I don't see what else could be, if you have a third option please elaborate.

* A brain thinks. "Thinking" is NOT "processing data." They are as different as apples and car keys, and just because you can throw both at someone's head and leave a mark, doesn't mean they are anything alike.

[axel77]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

* A brain thinks. "Thinking" is NOT "processing data." They are as different as apples and car keys, and just because you can throw both at someone's head and leave a mark, doesn't mean they are anything alike.

How is "thinking" other than "processing data"?

Please give your answers to following questions I asked some posts ago.

* If I build a device that can copy a human atom by atom. What would that duplicate do? How would it behave?

* If I build a device that can take a snapshot of my brain, and build a very very very high powered Virtual Reality Simulation, that can simulate the behaviour of every single cell in my brain from the snapshot on. Can this simulation think?

* Why is it, that a human can never learn to speak chinese if he has never been exposed to chinese?

[DaleDe]

If you built a device and copied a human atom by atom you can't even guarantee that it would come to life, much less think. There is more than hardware going on here.

Similarly you could build a simulator that duplicated the hardware of your brain you still can't make it think.

Dale

[axel77]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

If you built a device and copied a human atom by atom you can't even guarantee that it would come to life, much less think. There is more than hardware going on here.

Similarly you could build a simulator that duplicated the hardware of your brain you still can't make it think.

Dale

So your choice is: the human body is an antenna to an out-of-this-world soul?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by axel77

* If I build a device that can copy a human atom by atom. What would that duplicate do? How would it behave?

If it was an atom-by-atom duplicate of a human, it would function and behave (and think) exactly like the human it was duplicated from... up until an instant afterward, at which point the duplicate's experiences would be different from the original human, and its behavior would be colored by its own unique experiences.

Originally Posted by axel77

* If I build a device that can take a snapshot of my brain, and build a very high powered Virtual Reality Simulation, that can simulate the behaviour of every single cell in my brain from the snapshot on. Can this simulation think?

It could... IF you could accurately recreate the behavior of those neurons. However, since no one understands the brain well enough to do that very thing, any simulation you'd create could only create a rough simulation of the neurochemical process, which would not be enough to accomplish "thinking."

Originally Posted by axel77

* Why is it, that a human can never learn to speak chinese if he has never been exposed to chinese?

Why is it that a rock can not roll if it is not round, Grasshopper?

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by axel77

So your choice is: the human body is an antenna to an out-of-this-world soul?

Not an antenna which is only a conduit but the fact is we don't have a clue as to how life or thinking actually happens. Neither of these are guaranteed to automatically happen from the hardware. Similarly building a computer without intelligent designed software doesn't produce any solution at all.

Of course, you might believe that is all will just happen by accident and that is your prerogative but that takes more faith than I have.

[axel77]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Why is it that a rock can not roll if it is not round, Grasshopper?

okay, so I guess your problem is just with the word "processing"?

As you answers seem to go accord with the expression, the experiences we have through our life greatly impact of what will say/write.

[acidzebra]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

If you built a device and copied a human atom by atom you can't even guarantee that it would come to life, much less think. There is more than hardware going on here.

Similarly you could build a simulator that duplicated the hardware of your brain you still can't make it think.

Dale

a) you (and Steve too) are making absolute statements about something which has not been tried. "There is more than hardware going on here" - says you, but is there any hard evidence for that?
b) If you are going to build a "thinking machine" you would probably not start from the intricate complexities of a grown human body/mind (which has had years to build up to its current complexity, not to mention countless generations of predecessors) but rather with a small neural net and expand from that.

But it is obvious you and Steve think there is something more to humans than little turing meat machines reading and writing from and to each other and the larger environment, which is fine. I disagree.

[axel77]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Not an antenna which is only a conduit but the fact is we don't have a clue as to how life or thinking actually happens. Neither of these are guaranteed to automatically happen from the hardware.

Well aside from thinking on the "life" side, some simpler single cell lifeforms are actually pretty already well understood, that is the biochemical processes on how they duplicate, how they eat, how to build up a seperation membran, that is of inner and outer things to become a closed system and how they transform food to reconstruct themselves, and thats it already what you need to have a simple lifeform.

[axel77]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

But it is obvious you and Steve think there is something more to humans than little turing meat machines reading and writing from and to each other and the larger environment, which is fine. I disagree.

Well I don't think the human way of thinking is even close to a turing machine. But otherwise yes, it is a "thinking machine" and I believe that is something also Steve Jordan seems to agree to. He only has a problem with the "data in" - "brain process" - "data out" expression.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

But it is obvious you and Steve think there is something more to humans than little turing meat machines reading and writing from and to each other and the larger environment, which is fine. I disagree.

All I can say is this: If you're so sure the brain is just a "meat calculator," don't you think scientists would've figured out how it works a long time ago? They're figured out more complex organs and processes than that, throughout the body. Why not the brain?

Or do you really believe humans are just biochemical toasters?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by axel77

Well I don't think the human way of thinking is even close to a turing machine. But otherwise yes, it is a "thinking machine" and I believe that is something also Steve Jordan seems to agree to. He only has a problem with the "data in" - "brain process" - "data out" expression.

More like a "thinking organ." The brain has very little similarity to a machine, including a computer processor.

And yes, I disagree with the "data in" part of your equation. The brain can make its own data, independent from input. It is not limited to direct input for data to process.