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comment by JakobVirgil
JakobVirgil  ·  3550 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Scientists threaten boycott of European commission-funded Human Brain Project

A list of the misunderstandings/ bad assumptions of the Brain these brain sim projects .

The way I see it we really don't know enough about how the brain works to really even start.

Even our analogies may be ill founded i.e. brain as a computer etc. I am unsure we have a even a Theory of Intelligence or Sentience that reflects anything in the real world.

I also have the inkling that the simulator would be larger than the brain by a few orders of magnitude. Even with magic Moore's law.

Being in a Simulation background I have come to the conclusion that simulations that are as complex as the thing being simulated really don't have a whole lot of research utility. i.e. you have something as difficult to analyze as the real thing but you don't even know if it reflect s the thing it is meant to be modeling.

It seems to me this is the Sci-Fi dreams of [B]illionaires being acted out on the public dime.

[edit realized that millionaires are not really a thing anymore]





b_b  ·  3550 days ago  ·  link  ·  

So there are some things that I think a simulator could accomplish. Mainly these things revolve around specific diseases. For example, maybe we can get an idea about parkinson's treatment by looking at how current loops move about the brain. This could give us a better understanding of brain stimulation-based treatment (hypothetically).

However, I think that really isn't the purpose of this simulator. I think the purpose is to create an artificial consciousness under the hypothesis that consciousness is nothing more than the sum of the brain's electrochemical signals. This is where I diverge from the mainstream. It is my firm belief that consciousness is a function of the individual rather than of the brain (and by extension it's really a property of the universe). A brain can no more be said to be conscious than a rock, IMO. Anyway, even if you could model it, why does that have anything whatever to do with animal consciousness? Machine "intelligence":consciousness::Pleather:animal skin.

We don't mistake pleather for animal skin, or PVC decking for wood, because they're approximations of nature made to look like the thing itself, but resembling it in no way other than cursory visual inspection. Anyway, these are kind of rambling and unconnected thoughts, so I apologize. If you go here I have some more well organized writing on the topic, but that's a 5000 word commitment, which is the minimum I could squeeze the tip of the iceberg into.

JakobVirgil  ·  3550 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thank you. My thoughts parallel yours quite closely. Although I am not strictly dualist or rather not Dualist at all when I am on my guard.

b_b  ·  3550 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I would consider myself a materialist, if I had to pick a side. My point, perhaps not well made, is that dualism is alive and well in modern neuroscience, despite the fact that almost all modern neuroscientists will tell you that they are strict materialists. Merely stating that "consciousness comes from the brain" does nothing to solve the problem of consciousness (if such a thing exists).

JakobVirgil  ·  3550 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It made its point much better when I read rather than skimmed it.