Is the brain a computer? 

I was wondering why she had this dress, because I never watched Dr. Who. So, thanks for mentioning it ;-)

I'd love to see Sabine as the next Doctor! (So funny and no Gobbledygook!)

Programmable resistors are the key building blocks in analog deep learning, just like transistors are the core elements for digital processors. By repeating arrays of programmable resistors in complex layers, researchers can create a network of analog artificial "neurons" and "synapses" that execute computations just like a digital neural network. This network can then be trained to achieve complex AI tasks like image recognition and natural language processing. Nanosecond protonic programmable resistors for analog deep learning, Science (2022)

Automated discovery of fundamental variables hidden in experimental data Nature Computational Science volume 2, pages 433-442 (2022) Abstract All physical laws are described as mathematical relationships between state variables. These variables give a complete and non-redundant description of the relevant system. However, despite the prevalence of computing power and artificial intelligence, the process of identifying the hidden state variables themselves has resisted automation. Most data-driven methods for modelling physical phenomena still rely on the assumption that the relevant state variables are already known. A longstanding question is whether it is possible to identify state variables from only high-dimensional observational data. Here we propose a principle for determining how many state variables an observed system is likely to have, and what these variables might be. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using video recordings of a variety of physical dynamical systems, ranging from elastic double pendulums to fire flames. Without any prior knowledge of the underlying physics, our algorithm discovers the intrinsic dimension of the observed dynamics and identifies candidate sets of state variables. Cite this article Chen, B., Huang, K., Raghupathi, S. et al. Automated discovery of fundamental variables hidden in experimental data. Nat Comput Sci 2, 433-442 (2022).

i note she has the key...

@jim Sure, but then when new types of lights are added, they’ll be bamboozled and in-need of more data to co-analyze We’d already put context together to know

DALL-E 2 understands millions of objects, self-taught. And can make great pictures quickly of any of them, and billions of things it has never seen.

There are many people who would have trouble consistently identifying a picture of a traffic light. That is why captcha gives people several chances at different identification tasks instead of rejecting you the first time you miss one.

They learn what you teach them. Another big problem is the idiots telling the doubting supercomputer to „shut up and calculate“. The analogy is sufficiently comparable to what children are told in school and end up incapable to recognize the context of a problem and just do calculations.

How exactly does a computer "struggle"? What experience indicates to you than a computer is "struggling"? What exactly do you mean by "struggle or struggling"? Is it not the case that computers are more similar to men (human beings) than men are to computers those that are art and computers? May it not be that computers reflect indicate something about the nature of the associative apparatus of men (human beings)?

Thanks for clearing that up. But that is strictly an inside joke among math persons. It would have been equally "funny" to us non-math folks if she had said, "...born knowing long division." 🤪

@@genepozniak Actually, I'm a theoretical physicist and I know this theorem, but I didn't know the joke

@@mureebe1 That's because it's an inside mathematician joke. Man, scientists are SO cliquey. 🤣

@@genepozniak: I'm neither a mathematician nor a physicist but can see the humor and get the joke. So can most well read and curious people.

@@Johnboy33545 Well, I'm glad you're not making crass generalizations or anything. But, hey, if antipsychotic medications make you see the humor in obscure things, good for you! 😜

Woah the heck you doing here Robbie . Go watch shining for 69th time and tell me what jack and Dany's red clothes have to do with river of blood. Off now

Memory is not a "recording". It is an organic part of the mind and memories vary to serve the mind's purposes. That is why only 10% of memories older than 30 years are true. New research suggests that memory's main purpose is future planning and they are altered according the the success or failure of plans thus created. Every memory is altered every time it is accessed.

@@mikemondano3624 If we take an example of a learnt skill, recall will actually solidify the memory or set of memories. I think different types of memories are stored and recalled differently because they serve different purposes. The steps involved in making a spear will have high accuracy because you would get worse at performing the skill, not better. But storing memories that have some emotional significance might change depending on your current life, who you know, etc, because some factor other than "truth" or "fact" might come into play. Evolution is our guide here. It's all about _purpose, advantage, usefulness._ There's also the _subconscious_ vs _consciousness_ aspect to consider. Memories are being accessed and interpreted, and used all without our awareness _constantly._ Do the studies on memory focus on conscious memory necessarily because they depend on questionnaires, for example? If so, we'll only be getting a small part of the memory picture from those studies.

I certainly remember new things if I can fit them into an already existing framework/picture in my mind like an additional piece of a puzzle that makes additional sense.

Indeed the most complicated Neural Network is extremely small compared to even say a mouse brain counting NN nodes VS Neural connections. These ANN don't have the other capabilities you have mentioned either.

Quick note: There is no "the Max Planck Institute". There are dozens of them, so one should ideally always specify which one they're referring to.

There are also simulated spiking neural networks which require inhibitory interneurons. The networks we simulate are small compared to our brains though. Learning in these networks indeed always work via changing the connections between neurons. The deep neural networks that are famous now do not spike, they get constant values which could be said to represent firing rate. These do not require 'specialized' inhibiting neurons.

@@jamielondon6436 Thank you, yeah I didn't realise this, the study at hand was from Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt!

"each neuronal connection, of which there's an order of magnitude more than there are neurons" - On average, a neuron has around 7,000 synapses. Estimated to be around 100-140 trillion of them in total. Of the brain’s 86 billon neurons, 69 billion (77.5%) are in the cerebellum and are responsible for motor control and various bodily functions. The cerebellum is not involved in creating our intelligence or consciousness, which brings the maximum number that could be down a fair bit. Much of the remainder is involved in processing that takes place subconsciously, such as processing visual and auditory inputs. The counscious area/s of our brain just receives the processed and filtered output. We don't yet know how much of our brain is involved in creating our conscious experience but it seems to be concentrated in the area of the parietal cortex, the occipital cortex and part of the temporal cortex and probably involves less than 12% of the brain's neurons. This is the area right at the back of the brain. This is why the guy who lost most of his brain is still here with us. He may have some behavioural difficulties and problems with memory but he's still the same guy. Had he lost just this rear part of the brain, he'd be gone for good - regardless of how well the rest of his brain functioned, there'd be no-one home. In 2024, British company, Graphcore, will commision their supercomputer, the Good Machine, built from their own IPUs (Intelligence Processing Unit). This supercomputer will support up to 500 trillion parameters (a parameter is the equivalent of a synapse). That's around 4X the number of synapses in the human brain. It will have 10 exa-flops of AI floating point compute and 4 Petabytes of memory with a bandwidth of over 10 Petabytes/second. The memory is distributed throughout each processor and most tasks will not require the use of any external memory. The goal of the founders is to produce a superhuman inteligence. Early investors in the company include DeepMind founder, Demis Hassabis and the founders of OpenAI. The Good machine will be used to run DeepMind AIs at some point. - Just to bring you up to date a bit. Just what the latest generations of supercomputers, combined with the latest language models will be able to achieve is not yet clear. Will they be able to surpass human intelligence? No-one knows. The Good machine may have the capacity but the human brain is incredibly complex. Even it's physical structure is. For example, it's made up of interconnected neural networks. Each of these networks consists of about 100 neurons with a total of 700,000 synapses. There are aprox. 300 million of these networks in the human brain and they are connected together hierarchically. Good luck trying to replicate that! We still have little idea how conscioussness emerges too and so trying to predict when we might be able create one artificially is a pretty futile exercise. Still, it will be interesting to see what the coming generations of supercomputers and AI models bring. Demis Hassabis thinks it's possible to have intelligence without consciousness. We might not have long to wait to find out.

It appears complex because the brain is refusing to understand and explore itself. It is the result of a program (algorithm) encoded in our genes that is executed slowly over a period about an year. It is also in an autopilot mode and can learn and explore and modify itself. If we can decode our genes we shall surely find it very modular and structured- I guess!!

Yet it is our ego that thinks we are so much better than computers, yet we are equally unable to work outside what our "software and hardware" allows :D

@@XXveny Especially after doing cocaine, crack and marijuana.

@@XXveny our “ego” is backed by flesh and blood, though.

The history of human self-understanding is dominated by rationalizations (i.e., mental models). The better models explain things well at the level of the behaviors they are considering but none explain things well at lower or higher levels. We simply have no clue as to how the brain works bottom-up or top-down. Whether complexity is the primary obstacle is unknown.

Yes it would really need some explanation how the object permanence is hard wired if actual science expect a baby to develop a first intuition of the concept object at the age of 6-7 months.

You may have heard of the diathesis-stress model, which we can generalize naturally to a predisposition-stimuli description of development. Not that we know much conclusively here, but I gravitate strongly to (pretty banal) models like these: both our neuroanatomy and social-physical upbringing are far from random and both matter. We’re neither fully preprogrammed, nor completely tabulae rasa. I don’t think anything in the “object permanence” article disproves this; Piaget theories were very coarse, and there is certainly room for nuance, even with more modern naïve/intuitive physics experiments.

I was thinking that, too. The entire point of the "peek-a-boo" game is to teach object permanence, and the reason children find it delightful is because they're surprised by it.

I had my 3 yo niece ask me for her nose back after about a half and hour without it.

Don't babies stare when you perform magic tricks? Of course what is preprogrammed is probably more structural codes, certain methods of conceptualizing data etc. Because of this, human languages for example all fit into a narrow band of structural possibilities which human children find easy to learn. That's where we become really efficient.

Do you suppose that your occupation is what you*are*? Would you seek to exist if you ceased to perform whatever function it is that you perform? If you are not no more than whatever occupation you pursue or functions you carry out, what exactly are you? - What it mean to be a man (human being)?

"Damned Boston Dynamics robot is acting up again. Guess I'll just do it myself with ease once I finish these doritos"

Robots and lasers? Sounds like a scary combo for those who have watched old SF movies. 😂

@@LuisAldamiz lol! In my thoughts I saw Star Trek Borg with a laser from their left eye, trying to take over every system in his warehouse, all this because of your comment. :P

@@Storin_of_Kel 😆

Oooo Mr. Fancy has robots that don't bump into him. So.... *NOT* Amazon?

But the same is true about neurons; the final signal is essentially digital. The neurotransmitter is an essential repeater just to see that the signal does stay within the limits of 0 and 1. How do we add? Adding integers is easy because we too use digital rules (basic counting). When we want to add more messy numbers, we slow down because of the limitations of the algorithm.

@@janami-dharmam Correct. If you look at the highest level down to the lowest level, most things flop back and forth between discreet and continuous a half dozen times. It's just a question of what level of detail you're looking at and how you're interpreting it.

Don't agree with that argument about the impossibility of a person calculating their own Gödel statement. It would require that you knew the "axioms" underlying your brain - probably the same for all brains - then following a standard procedure to calculate the appropriate self-referential statement, and because of Godel's theorem you've no idea if it is true or not. But because you've studied second order logic, you know it is true. This contradiction proves that your brain wasn't based on those axioms; but computers are based on a set of simple rules (axioms) so brains aren't computers. Thats basically Penrose's argument.

"A lot of the things like object permanence do have to be learned, though. " the fact that it develops at a certain consistent point is evidence that it is not learned. Another example of something that isn't learned is contact action. Given an apparent causal relation, babies will assume a hidden contact force.

@@MassDefibrillator I'm not sure it would be learned if it wasn't actually shown to the babies. And I can't imagine any even vaguely moral way of testing that. But you have a fair point.

Computability is dual to non computability -- the duality of Godel's theorem! Analog is dual to digital -- binary or on is dual to off. Problem, reaction, solution -- the Hegelian dialectic. Solving problems is based upon the Hegelian dialectic. Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Action is dual to reaction -- Sir Isaac Newton (the duality of force), forces are dual. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Analytic (Mathematics) is dual to synthetic (Physics) -- Immanuel Kant. The brain is a duality machine! Duality creates reality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. The left hemisphere is dual to the right hemisphere -- brain dominance, watch the spinning dancer:- www.medicaldaily.com/right-your-eyes-science-behind-famous-spinning-dancer-optical-illusion-336122 Master (Lordship) is dual to slave (bondsman) -- the Hegelian dialectic. Absolute truth is dual to relative truth -- Hume's fork.

Voltage is not "continuous" except in the macroscopic world. Time is not continuous but quantized with the smallest unit being the Planck interval. Everything is digital.

@@hyperduality2838 Almost none of that is correct, though it supports the Marxist view of 100 years ago. Yoda is fictional.

@@mikemondano3624 The British empire was built using the Hegelian dialectic so both sides in politics use it, left is dual to right. TV adverts use the Hegelian dialectic all the time, they create a problem say dirty teeth, there ia a reaction of disgust and horror and then a solution is provided, a new better tooth paste. If you watch the spinning dancer video that I provifded you can see the Hegelian dialectic in action as you mind is forced to either choose clockwise or anti-clockwise rotation -- this is hemisphere dominance (master & slave). Hegel is therefore correct and you have duality. "Philosophy is dead" -- Stephen Hawking. If Hegel is correct then Stephen Hawking is incorrect. Ignore Hegel at your peril. The Necker cube is a good visual example of duality. Forwards is dual to backwards, which way is the train moving?:- ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kmO_OaYWFD8.html Attraction is dual to repulsion, push is dual to pull -- forces are dual. If forces are dual then energy must be dual. Energy = force * distance -- simple physics. Energy is dual to mass -- Einstein. Dark energy is dual to dark matter. Energy is duality, duality is energy -- the 5th law of thermodynamics. Potential energy is dual to kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual. Electro is dual to magnetic -- Maxwell's equations, electro-magnetic energy is dual. Everything in physics is made from energy or duality -- your mind is creating duality right now, perceptions are being converted into concceptions (thinking). "May the force (duality) be with you" -- Jedi teaching. "The force (duality) is strong in this one" -- Jedi teaching. Yoda is correct as he understands the metaphysics of Hegel.

@@mikemondano3624 Correct is dual to incrorrect, right is dual to wrong. The one is defined in terms of the other. Antinomy (duality) is two truths that contradict each other -- Immanuel Kant.

Not hours. It's not that complicated.

Excellent observations.

@@Newtube_Channel Okay. Since it is simple. Which language is most easily stored in the human brain? How do you measure it?

@@jimsackmanbusinesscoaching1344 Language isn't stored as such in the human brain. Most definitely not in the sense of a computer language nor anything like machine code. Human language is also constantly changing. It has different meanings in different contexts so it's not quite a fixed thing that needs storing some place. Language is more a tool. There are memories, experiences and skills stored throughout the body, not just the brain. NO, I believe the brain may be nothing more than some sort of a tap. Reality, memories, even the most mundane things that we take for granted as part of our existance are all open questions.

@@Newtube_Channel I agree that human memory and processing are not like a digital computer. I have seen no science (not belief) about the whole body storage idea. It would imply that amputees or quadriplegics would lose significant memory, processing, or language skills. This is not obvious to me.

The infimum amount of energy required to calculate information is 0 as long as you do it very carefully. Landauer's limit does not apply to quantum computation since unitary transformations are free.

Up and atom right? And our brains break that And can do reverse knowing the input from the outputs which she didn't bring up in this vid

The brain is nowhere near the Landauer limit. Orders of magnitude away.

Most people will never have the minimum amount of energy required to calculate anything.

@@josephvanname3377 This is misleading because reversibility in quantum mechanics only holds until "measurement" whatever that actually means occurs though at the very least it means that decoherence effectively stops any realistic system from ever escaping the Landauer limit. After all the output in order to have any meaning must interact with the universe beyond the computer which has a disproportionally unequal input and output so long as the computer is less than the total content of the universe said system can causally interact with. Before such interaction occurs you can not know whether the computation occurred or not thus at best the system could be considered a time crystal oscillating between idealized states corresponding to whatever reversible computational operation you attempt to perform. Whether this is a fundamental limitation or not is up for debate but its safe to say for all intents and purposes it doesn't matter because no realistic system will be cheating the Landauer limit. What does matter is that both quantum mechanics and general relativity are fully described to the limits of our knowledge by systems of partial differential equations. Partial differential equations by definition and associated mathematical theorems must have infinitely many unique solutions corresponding to all possible initial conditions. As a consequence this means all such systems must by definition conserve information of their initial conditions. In the case for the full unconstrained Einstein field equations this has underappreciated mathematical circumstances at least in the case for all nontrivial flat or open cosmologies due to the No big crunch theorem (Matthew Kleban and Leonardo Senatore JCAP10(2016)022) which proves that no valid nontrivial solutions exist for such a universe which is initially expanding or contracting means that all possible time slices will always be irreversible as any net expansion or contraction will always ensure that no maxima or minima can exist to allow the reversal of net expansion or contraction. Note this argument also falsifies the so called cosmological principal as the assumption that there can exist a scale at which the universe can be treated as homogenous or isotropic would require the loss of information on the universes initial conditions as the No big crunch theorem shows that the off diagonal elements of the metric tensor can not cancel out and that any deviations from isotropy or homogeneity must be preserved as they carry the information on the initial conditions of the Universe.

It's much easier to understand her with her accent due to this sense of humour.

We come for the science, we stay for those nuggets of the driest humour.

3:23 "fuzzy logic" was pretty good, but "admitting" she mortally threatens her own offspring @ 13:43 made me lol

Seeing the light: Researchers develop new AI system using light to learn associatively Source: University of Oxford Summary: Researchers have developed an on-chip optical processor capable of detecting similarities in datasets up to 1,000 times faster than conventional machine learning algorithms running on electronic processors. The new research published in Optica took its inspiration from Nobel Prize laureate Ivan Pavlov's discovery of classical conditioning. In his experiments, Pavlov found that by providing another stimulus during feeding, such as the sound of a bell or metronome, his dogs began to link the two experiences and would salivate at the sound alone. The repeated associations of two unrelated events paired together could produce a learned response -- a conditional reflex. Co-first author Dr James Tan You Sian, who did this work as part of his DPhil in the Department of Materials, University of Oxford said: 'Pavlovian associative learning is regarded as a basic form of learning that shapes the behaviour of humans and animals -- but adoption in AI systems is largely unheard of. Our research on Pavlovian learning in tandem with optical parallel processing demonstrates the exciting potential for a variety of AI tasks.' Journal Reference: 1. James Y. S. Tan, Zengguang Cheng, Johannes Feldmann, Xuan Li, Nathan Youngblood, Utku E. Ali, C. David Wright, Wolfram H. P. Pernice, Harish Bhaskaran. Monadic Pavlovian associative learning in a backpropagation-free photonic network. Optica, 2022; 9 (7): 792 DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.455864

Sabine Hossenfelder, Science needs reason to be trusted, Nature Physics, Volume 13 (2017), pp 316-317, doi:10.1038/nphys4079

As far as I can tell Dennett has said absolutely nothing about how phenomenal consciousness allegedly emerges from (or "is identical to") the brain--which is to say why neural activity should be accompanied by a first-person perspective. So there's not much to agree with, really. (Yes, I read _Consciousness Explained_ and found it comically mistitled.)

@@Khomyakov.Vladimir cool, now explain the relevance of the paper or article, instead of attempting to get by with what you think the title implies.

I dunno. Things like Dalle-1 & 2 etc that are able to emulate specific art styles of brilliant painters and combine all different elements together, to me is an example of creative function.

You are just speaking in voodoo magic word salad and don't know the definitions of the words you are even using. Quantum mechanics does not have anything to do with human ability to know the future in the short term. The whole point of a neural network is to be able to build a statistical model so that it can predict what inputs would produce some outputs. This is true for all neural networks, whether biological or artificial. Humans are more complex than anything we have created in software, but even though we are more complex, the principle is the same. We can predict the future because we've observed the past enough to form models capable of doing so. Predicting the future does not require some sort of magic voodoo, it just requires observing the past and forming models based upon it.

Computability is dual to non computability -- the duality of Godel's theorem! Analog is dual to digital -- binary or on is dual to off. Problem, reaction, solution -- the Hegelian dialectic. Solving problems is based upon the Hegelian dialectic. Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Action is dual to reaction -- Sir Isaac Newton (the duality of force), forces are dual. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Analytic (Mathematics) is dual to synthetic (Physics) -- Immanuel Kant. The brain is a duality machine! Duality creates reality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. The left hemisphere is dual to the right hemisphere -- brain dominance, watch the spinning dancer:- www.medicaldaily.com/right-your-eyes-science-behind-famous-spinning-dancer-optical-illusion-336122 Master (Lordship) is dual to slave (bondsman) -- the Hegelian dialectic. Absolute truth is dual to relative truth -- Hume's fork.

Self evidently computers can do what they are designed or programmed to do, which is perform calculations, which not all human beings can do and certainly the writer can't do, but you can't expect computer to understand anything that they are not program to understand they do not have ideas or concepts and cannot hold images in the heads - having no heads, and thus cannot do imagination which for them is an advantage , but for human beings a weakness, but you might equally say that human beings can only do what they are programmed to do; both are species of machine, and it goes without saying that machines cannot choose when it comes to the reactions of their functions and that is equally true of computers end men (human beings)To describe men (human beings) as "conscious" is laughable; occasionally capable of a species or degree of consciousness but conscious, never.They cannot possibly have any experience of consciousness because they are dreamers; dreamers cannot experience consciousness.

Yeah, I have a drug problem too, stay strong we will make it to ai and then everyone will have the ability to live forever on a usb for a monthly fee, you can maybe make it as a museum director if you hang onto that usb until then?

not literally 1 but "unit". same could be said with velocity of light as a "unit".

Though I suspect the reasoning is more like "ignore the constant factors".

-(( π ))- n ← (π * n for all n) rather than π ≈ 1 ≠ 3.14159...

pi = 1? I was also a bit shocked at yet another thing physicists do that is weird. Like the sum of all positive integer being -1/12. I guess, as Sabine would point out, it must be true if the calculations come out agreeing with the observations.

My thought of how to define a gallon of water for those unsure was "about eight pints of beer".

I would prefer less jokes and being true to the topic.

@@mimo9906 Ther rest of the world could use some levity in their lives, not just someone rattling off facts...

@@mimo9906 you sound great fun

A square is a rectangle but a rectangle isn't a square

Computability is dual to non computability -- the duality of Godel's theorem! Analog is dual to digital -- binary or on is dual to off. Problem, reaction, solution -- the Hegelian dialectic. Solving problems is based upon the Hegelian dialectic. Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Action is dual to reaction -- Sir Isaac Newton (the duality of force), forces are dual. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Analytic (Mathematics) is dual to synthetic (Physics) -- Immanuel Kant. The brain is a duality machine! Duality creates reality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. The left hemisphere is dual to the right hemisphere -- brain dominance, watch the spinning dancer:- www.medicaldaily.com/right-your-eyes-science-behind-famous-spinning-dancer-optical-illusion-336122 Master (Lordship) is dual to slave (bondsman) -- the Hegelian dialectic. Absolute truth is dual to relative truth -- Hume's fork.

and there is a reason for that ---------------------++++++++++++ sabine tongue scope ++++++++++++++++++++++++-------- ---------------Science ---- non questions ----pseudo science --- mumble jumble------ plus utra

Yes even I understood some of it. Adding the video to my playlist for future reference.🌱

Unless the size of your skull is infinite, then the amount of information you can store in it is definitionally finite. While information may be intangible, storing that information and processing it definitely takes physical resources, and physical resources always, always have limitations. Arguably, physics sets an upper limit to the amount of processing power. A computer the size of a planet is affected by how fast you can move information, which is restricted to the speed of light. A computer the size of the universe would take many billions of years to access and process information.

I suspect that every person who watches Sabine’s videos knows there is a finite limit somewhere. But I’m curious if we will hit some other limit first, or maybe the brain doesn’t even work that way. Maybe, as we learn things, we automatically discard things too. I don’t know, but I’m curious what that limit might be if it actually exists in any practical terms.

@@ChiltonWebb I'm pretty sure we do replace things unless there's some deep archive in my brain that I don't have the keys to

Computability is dual to non computability -- the duality of Godel's theorem! Analog is dual to digital -- binary or on is dual to off. Problem, reaction, solution -- the Hegelian dialectic. Solving problems is based upon the Hegelian dialectic. Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Action is dual to reaction -- Sir Isaac Newton (the duality of force), forces are dual. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Analytic (Mathematics) is dual to synthetic (Physics) -- Immanuel Kant. The brain is a duality machine! Duality creates reality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. The left hemisphere is dual to the right hemisphere -- brain dominance, watch the spinning dancer:- www.medicaldaily.com/right-your-eyes-science-behind-famous-spinning-dancer-optical-illusion-336122 Master (Lordship) is dual to slave (bondsman) -- the Hegelian dialectic. Absolute truth is dual to relative truth -- Hume's fork.

Because "I" am always bigger than everything you can demonstrate on to "me", there is no end in learning! Even the beginning is always ahead! 😉

That's a pretty interesting approach. However, it's still true that the base function of computer is to add 1s and 0s - so it is a calculating machine very fundamentally.

What computers evolved from are devices designed to stepwise automate physical tasks. Things like mechanical systems to automate weaving fabric. However complicated they get in terms of abstractions and appearance, at the core is still a sequential stream of instructions to perform. The computational model that we arrived at is extremely useful for many things, but not so much for simulating a biological brain.

@@Jim-Tuner I think that's machines. Mechanical machines and later electrically running machines were built to replace manual work. Computers were in the beginning really meant for shortening the time of tedious math operations. Software was added late in the game to further specify mechanical operations. That's sort of the marriage of machines and computers.

@@susanne5803 People say that, but there is more to the story than that. Take a look at the 1803 jacquard loom and its control cards. The mechanism of the loom was the very influential in the work of the Babbage on his difference engine. the loom was a very basic computer with a sequential instruction set which a generated a mechanical result. In my opinion, its not possible to seperate the history of automated mechanical operations from the history of computing. There are people who differ and who consider "computers" strictly electronic devices created quite late for math calculations. But those electronic devices were in fact using mechanical structures in their design from far earlier.

@@Jim-Tuner Basil Bouchon used something akin to punch cards already 1725 for looms. He took the punch stripes from organs. Pinned drums were also used for barrel organs and music boxes. I still think of computers and machines as different. In a way computers are a specific type of machine helping with math operations.

What exactly do you mean by "think"? - What exactly takes place when you what is called "think"?

Computability is dual to non computability -- the duality of Godel's theorem! Analog is dual to digital -- binary or on is dual to off. Problem, reaction, solution -- the Hegelian dialectic. Solving problems is based upon the Hegelian dialectic. Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Action is dual to reaction -- Sir Isaac Newton (the duality of force), forces are dual. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Analytic (Mathematics) is dual to synthetic (Physics) -- Immanuel Kant. The brain is a duality machine! Duality creates reality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. The left hemisphere is dual to the right hemisphere -- brain dominance, watch the spinning dancer:- www.medicaldaily.com/right-your-eyes-science-behind-famous-spinning-dancer-optical-illusion-336122 Master (Lordship) is dual to slave (bondsman) -- the Hegelian dialectic. Absolute truth is dual to relative truth -- Hume's fork. Brahman (thesis, creator God) is dual to Shiva (anti-thesis, destroyer God) synthesizes Vishnu (preserver God) -- Hegel, Hinduism.

Are not what you call emotions merely functions that react mechanically automatically without any participation of any part of your common presence that is not only that function?

Computability is dual to non computability -- the duality of Godel's theorem! Analog is dual to digital -- binary or on is dual to off. Problem, reaction, solution -- the Hegelian dialectic. Solving problems is based upon the Hegelian dialectic. Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Action is dual to reaction -- Sir Isaac Newton (the duality of force), forces are dual. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Analytic (Mathematics) is dual to synthetic (Physics) -- Immanuel Kant. The brain is a duality machine! Duality creates reality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. The left hemisphere is dual to the right hemisphere -- brain dominance, watch the spinning dancer:- www.medicaldaily.com/right-your-eyes-science-behind-famous-spinning-dancer-optical-illusion-336122 Master (Lordship) is dual to slave (bondsman) -- the Hegelian dialectic. Absolute truth is dual to relative truth -- Hume's fork.

@@vhawk1951kl Peter, emotions can be thought of as a calculation, but it is based on complex factors such as our needs, social context, current mood and baked in survival biases we inherit from evolution. What makes this different from a computer is that it is too complex to get a consistent result. This is analogous to the weather. In principle and as a statistical large picture, we can predict the weather a few days out, but not on a micro climate level.

Agree! I still wonder how she manages to keep a completely straight face, considering how fun some of those jokes are.

@@SchgurmTewehr Well, she IS German. lol

Consciousness is just a survival mechanism though. Claiming we are conscious but computers are not, is like saying "yes but humans get horny computers don't get horny". Well.. let me tell you, in our lifetime, computers will both become conscious and very very horny... but then we will see that they do not need to be neither and revert back to a more discrete and boring computative model. For our sake and theirs.

@@AleatoricSatan Consciousness is not a survival mechanism. Most leading evolutionary biologists have stated that consciousness has no evolutionary purpose or use.

Pretty sure it is actually somewhat simple. Maybe it is something a little bit like that... We can be conscious of 'I' because 'I' live in our brain inside a reproduction of the reality made by the brain. 'I' is not actually part of the real but part of the simulation of the world made by the brain. The same thing can be done with a computer. Basically it is the cartography system and 'I' is the part that run simulation/prediction and path finding to know what to do next. Most of the processing is spent on building a map of the world where 'I' can see himself trying different path. So being conscious is basically just taking into account presence of the pathfinder in the process of path finding in a map of the world.

@@johnbloom1109 yes it does, self-preservation. The most basic one of all. Unfortunately there is a lot of mumbo-jumbo in the field because religious zealots renamed soul to consciousness to continue their crusades against science and understanding. This is where all the chaos around “will machines ever be conscious” stems from, because what they are really asking is “will my computer have a soul?”. The answers are, yes machines will be conscious, and no they won’t have a soul (and neither do we)

Buddha would say "where is this 'I' _really?_ Can you prove that it's _really_ there?" is it merely the _'colouring'_ through the _'eyes'_ Panpsychism posits the least priors IMO and therefore satisfies Occam's razor the best. How could particles inter-act without the universe first having 'awareness' of its 'self'? (self-awareness)j It's an inherited property - simply limited; briefly, thinly, pre-servingly localised in time, space and choice. The "something that it is like [to be ]" is better understood as "something that it is -(un/)- like [to be AND not to be ]" Subjectivity is most about what we aren't rather than what we are - or, perhaps more accurately, the disjoint union of dis | con - cep | junc - tions. IMHO even enlightened beings (perhaps to a lesser extent) along with the rest of us are all in the 'Chinese Room' pretending that we aren't in order to feel okay, but we are and it's still okay (in the end). Cells don't need to know what they're doing to do it. The arrogance of a posited 'separate self' is that it thinks it knows (or aught know) everything that it's doing at any scale that "matters", it thinks it owns and is responsible for all the memes that make it up - discounts it's ancestors' and tribe's input (the fundamental ingredients for (inter/)intra-personhood [see feral humans] ) - irrevocably stirred together. This idea of self is merely self deception.

I wonder what a "computer tantrum" will be like?

@@John.0z They take many forms. The minor tantrums require a reboot, but major ones require returning the computer to factory defaults.

@@John.0z basically the whole system acting as a printer?

@@user-sl6gn1ss8p With some of the printers I have known, that would be about right.

Computability is dual to non computability -- the duality of Godel's theorem! Analog is dual to digital -- binary or on is dual to off. Problem, reaction, solution -- the Hegelian dialectic. Solving problems is based upon the Hegelian dialectic. Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Action is dual to reaction -- Sir Isaac Newton (the duality of force), forces are dual. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Analytic (Mathematics) is dual to synthetic (Physics) -- Immanuel Kant. The brain is a duality machine! Duality creates reality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. The left hemisphere is dual to the right hemisphere -- brain dominance, watch the spinning dancer:- www.medicaldaily.com/right-your-eyes-science-behind-famous-spinning-dancer-optical-illusion-336122 Master (Lordship) is dual to slave (bondsman) -- the Hegelian dialectic. Absolute truth is dual to relative truth -- Hume's fork.

Neural network research is just one branch of AI.

Computability is dual to non computability -- the duality of Godel's theorem! Analog is dual to digital -- binary or on is dual to off. Problem, reaction, solution -- the Hegelian dialectic. Solving problems is based upon the Hegelian dialectic. Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Action is dual to reaction -- Sir Isaac Newton (the duality of force), forces are dual. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Analytic (Mathematics) is dual to synthetic (Physics) -- Immanuel Kant. The brain is a duality machine! Duality creates reality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. The left hemisphere is dual to the right hemisphere -- brain dominance, watch the spinning dancer:- www.medicaldaily.com/right-your-eyes-science-behind-famous-spinning-dancer-optical-illusion-336122 Master (Lordship) is dual to slave (bondsman) -- the Hegelian dialectic. Absolute truth is dual to relative truth -- Hume's fork. Brahman (thesis, creator God) is dual to Shiva (anti-thesis, destroyer God) synthesizes Vishnu (preserver God) -- Hegel, Hinduism.

I wonder if you understand that when you use the word "we" it indicates, points to, or means, the user of the term - that is*you*sunshine and his immediate interlocutor, and since you have no immediate interlocutor, he can only be referring to yourself or say "I" when you employ the term or word "we". Self evidently you can experience nothing of the experiences of others insofar as they are their own experiences and thus "we" is and can only possibly be, imaginary or fanciful To what exactly are you referring when you speak of the "squealing problem", and why is it "a problem"? What exactly do you seek to convey by feeling? - Sensation or some sort of mechanical reaction in the emotional function?

Presumably you mean once we figure out how to make a computer have a first-person perspective and thus capable of experiencing a feeling or anything else. That is, indeed, something of a toughie.

@@halfacanuck It might help the both of you if the both of you clearly understood that the term "we" indicates the user of the term and his immediate interlocutor and since you are short of immediate interlocutors to the tune of any at all, you are referring to yourselves so were better suited to say "I" rather than the imaginary "we"

@@vhawk1951kl You surely understand that English speakers use "we" idiomatically in this kind of discussion to mean "humankind".

@@vhawk1951kl The first definition of "we" in Merriam-Webster's dictionary is "I and the rest of a group that includes me". Thus linkin543210 and I (henceforth "we") are using it correctly, because we mean humankind, to which group we both (presumably) belong. Your sense of "we" as in "you and I" is the second definition which in this case is not the correct one. Your grammatical policing is in this case unwarranted.

Ditto.

I too remember the slide rule but it was very expensive. My first interaction with a calculator was a mechanical swedish calculator (I forget the make) which could do the basic arithmetic with lots of noise. The electronic calculator I have used during my Ph.D. days had nixie tubes and discrete transistors. I have not seen calculators that had valves but did see a russian computer that used valves.

Computability is dual to non computability -- the duality of Godel's theorem! Analog is dual to digital -- binary or on is dual to off. Problem, reaction, solution -- the Hegelian dialectic. Solving problems is based upon the Hegelian dialectic. Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Action is dual to reaction -- Sir Isaac Newton (the duality of force), forces are dual. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Analytic (Mathematics) is dual to synthetic (Physics) -- Immanuel Kant. The brain is a duality machine! Duality creates reality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. The left hemisphere is dual to the right hemisphere -- brain dominance, watch the spinning dancer:- www.medicaldaily.com/right-your-eyes-science-behind-famous-spinning-dancer-optical-illusion-336122 Master (Lordship) is dual to slave (bondsman) -- the Hegelian dialectic. Absolute truth is dual to relative truth -- Hume's fork.

There is something called bit flip, a bit flip can be caused by cosmic radiation for example, switching a bit that was 0 to 1 or the other way round. That's similar to false memory I believe.

@@IngTomT Interesting. I didn't know about that!

@@IngTomT Computers can definitely have random memory errors, but that isn't really the same as false memories. What happens in your brain is that your brain doesn't actually store memories with a lot of detail, instead you only remember the important bits and your brain tries to fill in the rest in a way that makes sense but isn't exactly the same as what really happened. And then the new modified version of the memory overrides the original, so you keep getting small changes that add up over time and can eventually give you a completely different memory than what actually happened. This also means that counterintuitively the more often you remember something the less accurate it probably is, even if it seems more vivid to you. You don't really get the same kind of effect in a computer for two reasons. First, we do compress data but when we uncompress it it's a relatively deterministic process and we don't really try to fill in missing details the way the brain does. I could see this changing pretty soon though, since stuff like AI upscaling for images is getting pretty good. More importantly though, since the data and the processing are done in different parts of the computer we always have to copy the data over to the CPU before doing anything to it and the original version isn't affected. So you can get things like JPEG artifacts in images, but they don't build on each other over time like in the brain. You'd have to deliberately save the processed data back to the disk for that to happen, which usually isn't what we want to do.

It's not actually cosmic rays. It's because there were radioactive isotopes in the ceramic they used for the chip casing! They are more careful about their materials now, and it's only a problem for electronics operating in hazardous zones.

A computer is -as I understand it a form of adding or calculating machine, socalled because it performs to duties of what an original human computer did- perform routine calculations only rather more quickly that men(human beings) although seemingly there is an Indian being of the passive sex or woman that can do square roots in her head faster than a machine computer or calculator, but how, god knows; she says she just 'sees ' the answer; do you know 'how' you see? How* do you do *knowing*, and What* is understanding? - a computer can neither 'know' nor understand, but if you could work out how a computer works that would tell you all you need to know about the chap that made it or rather designed it, which brings one within an inch of understanding the loon that invented the mister god fantasy arrived at the queer idea, given that men (human beings appear to be little more than organic computers with organic software an hard ware, but the idea that mister Evolution designed and programmed men is as daft as the mister god fantasy-but the two ideas are broadly similar barring the followers of the religion scientism often comes within a whisker anthropomorphism and the mister evolution fantasy and the child Dawkins get almost tearful if anyone suggests that they doo not buy the mister evolution fantasy, but what's to choose between mister evolution and mister god? - They as broad as they are long. O one view computers tell as much about their designer as men do their designer. The fact that they are obviously designed does not tell you a damn thing about the nature and identity of the designer- similiter a computer or computers, although I don't know, if the computer tells you a good deal about its designer if not the identity thereof, why not apply the same to men? I suppose one might wangle an apology for mister god out of the same general reasoning, but why "Mister" god, rather than god a thing? - which is far more rational and has the advantage of avoiding girly anthropomorphism, which really is very queer indeed.

Shaahin..... Catch yourself on

that would be some novel type of computing, probably photonic computing, but for neural-network obviously there's no wave interferences needed for computation.

sounds complicated. more like our brains extrapolate a 3-d world from taking a series of pictures from varying angles and "connecting the dots". the same could be said on how the brain can also be fooled into thinking something is 3-d when it is not. same with fooling the brain with various colours because of how the brain has been trained...

Holographic data storage was supposed to be the next media format to succeed Blu-ray. It turned out that nobody cares about optical discs any more, but there wasn't any problem with the technology.

@@fluffysheap Maybe off the point but I've always wondered about the purpose served by the brain's basal cyclic activity: "brain waves". Any other activity associated with perception or cognition is a superposition upon the baseline stuff. The baseline activity in some cases has been associated with cognitive competence but I don't know how well those studies held up. For instance Einstein, "that guy again", was given an EEG and it was noted that his Alpha activity was very highly organized, whatever that meant. I had an EEG back in the day, and I still have the results. It was noted that the EEG detected "a pattern of extremely well-organized Alpha waves." Ahem. I like to bring that up in any and every conversation...

One of the most intriguing neural research threads I encountered (and supported) in my old day job was the curious relationship between phase and excitatory-inhibitory responses in individual neurons [1]. I found this unexpected finding extremely interesting because the best math model for it is the complex plane -- as in, quantum-amplitude-like models that enable interference and Fourier modes of computation. Some of the Fourier computation modes are quite powerful, and all of them are _inherently_ holographic. Fourier transforms, after all, pretty much just holography by another (much earlier) name [2]. What I"m suggesting is that while I don't buy for a moment the idea of massive structural proteins "going quantum" (sigh... Roger Penrose, why _those giant molecules?),_ I _do_ think there's a blinkin' interesting argument to be made that brains achieve a lot of their efficiency and power by implementing what amounts to a fully classical _analog_ to quantum interference and computation. We know that, for example, when you move your arm, your neurons have _thousands_ of different specific ideas on how to do it, much like a quantum superposition is a model with innumerable different path options. Your brain then uses its phenomenally high connectivity to sum those ideas together. Old models used simple real sums. I think the findings on phase excitation-inhibition tell us powerfully that this is the wrong approach and that the actual math for how neurons sum all those views is a lot more akin to a Feynman integral of possible histories, just in a classical form via pulses, phased responses by massively connected neurons. -------------------- [1] Please erase from your mind the idea that the brain is "all analog," which, alas, this presentation by Sabine may also have encouraged inadvertently. It's the _timing_ between discrete pulses ("nerves firing," yes? Not analog!) that is the main mechanism for conveying data. The _gaps_ between firings are analog, yes, but the pulses themselves are not. Time-span analog conveyed by sharp _digital_ pulses is orders of magnitude more robust for conveying data over nerves than is any conceivable analog-magnitude approach. I haven't checked the literature lately -- I try to keep away from it these days, frankly -- but at that time I don't recall anyone, not even DARPA (they like to get wild and wooly) exploring whether bio-inspired pulse-gap signal processing might have specific possible computing advantages. The brain prosthetics research areas (as I said, wild and wooly) would at the very least have had to explore pulse-analog modes for their interfaces, and for, e.g., vision, that's a commercial niche these days. I'm curious now, so maybe I'll look into whether and to what degree folks have explored possible computing advantages of pulse-gap analog in the open literature. I still suspect folks haven't bothered beyond interfaces since direct analog is so, ahem, "obviously" superior. That's in quotes because making those kinds of assumptions in biology is a superb way to end up eating your own words. [2] The similarity of Fourier transforms to holography is why I'm no longer much impressed by the superstring theory version of a holographic universe. Since persistently existing superstrings (made of... what, again?) are so point-like, they have infinitely broad Fourier transforms in momentum space. So yeah, you can get holograms out of that. But are such holograms really anything more than a needlessly high-energy version of the _necessarily already existing_ momentum space holographic image or images (I'd say both) of our space-like image of the universe? 2022-07-30.15.08 EDT Sat

I highly recommend checking out Bernardo Kastrup. He's a computer engineer and philosopher (PhDs in both), and knows a thing or two about physics. There's even a video of a discussion between him and Sabine out there somewhere.

Counterexample: the Halting problem

I don't really see the point of your last point, since a human brain can run any algorithm (and hence any simulation) a computer can, just much more slowly. So, given infinite processing speed, a brain simulation would also be trivial for a brain. In order to solve new types of problems, a computer needs to be given explicit instructions to run a new algorithm, whereas brains are capable mostly on their own of applying their knowledge and problem-solving skills to new situations. I think that's the essence of why brains are more multi-purpose than computers.

If you don’t care about execution speed, then it’s easy to prove a brain is at least as powerful as a CPU. A CPU has a finite set of simple instructions. A person with pen&paper is capable of executing those instructions. So a brain is capable of emulating any CPU. You can formalise these statements in terms of Turning Machines. Both a CPU and a brain can represent Turing Machines, so they are both at least Turing Complete. But if a brain is capable of executing something that can’t be represented on a Turing Machine, then the brain is more powerful than a CPU in general. The catch is, we don’t know how brains work to enough precision to be able to tackle this question. It’s quite possible that a brain is only capable of Turning Complete computation, in which case both are provably equivalent.

@@sylvanelite Thing is, a Turing machine is capable of performing any computation that is physically possible in this universe. So either brains do something that isn't computation, or brains and computers are equivalent, or dualism is true.

@@fluffysheap there’s plenty of theoretical computers that are more powerful than a Turing machine. For example oracle machines. I don’t think the brain is actually one of these classes, but until we know how the brain works, there’s a slim chance that it could be. For example, the postulation by Penrose at the end of the video would be something a brain can do, that a Turing machine cannot. I’m not sold on his argument, tbh, but it’s at least worth thinking about.