tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post2611954756826427050..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: My Little Steampony SingularityDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-66934064611428964892012-07-16T07:06:55.327-07:002012-07-16T07:06:55.327-07:00>Also "some kind of neuromorphic machine&q...>Also "some kind of neuromorphic machine" -- nobody knows **what** the<br />hell that would be! ;-><br /><br />I imagine a bunch of processors that have a hardware (ie faster) implementation of some of the many models of neurons, hooked up to a router that emulates the connectivity.<br /><br />>Why not, indeed? Well, getting a basic wiring diagram (what Gerald Edelman<br />calls the "primary repertoire") is just part of the problem.<br />Those synapses, in a living brain, are **weighted** too -- they contribute<br />positively or negatively in various degrees to the likelihood of the postsynaptic<br />neuron firing (and even, apparently, at least in some cases, to the<br />behavior of the presynaptic neuron -- surprises like that are always turning up,<br />it seems).<br /><br />Well, the Izhikevich model seems to have a rather low number of features that might presumably be recovered from electron micrography, + some extra stains and what not. Although it's just a spiking neuron, and it doesn't have the complexity of the more detailed models Myers talks about, it replicates spikes just fine. And it certainly doesn't require you to measure the concentration of ions across every square micron of membrane. <br /><br />Then again, whether it preserves memories is another thing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-28296020331404015162012-07-15T18:29:05.931-07:002012-07-15T18:29:05.931-07:00> [W]hy not just slice the brain, scan it, edge...> [W]hy not just slice the brain, scan it, edge-detect the slices,<br />> build a connectivity graph out of that, and run it in some kind of<br />> neuromorphic machine?<br /><br />Why not, indeed? Well, getting a basic wiring diagram (what Gerald Edelman<br />calls the "primary repertoire") is just part of the problem.<br />Those synapses, in a living brain, are **weighted** too -- they contribute<br />positively or negatively in various degrees to the likelihood of the postsynaptic<br />neuron firing (and even, apparently, at least in some cases, to the<br />behavior of the presynaptic neuron -- surprises like that are always turning up,<br />it seems). That's what Edelman calls the "secondary repertoire", and<br />it's presumably a substantial part of whatever "memory" consists<br />of. If "edge-detect[ing] the slices" isn't enough to recover that<br />information, you're probably screwed.<br /><br />Also "some kind of neuromorphic machine" -- nobody knows **what** the<br />hell that would be! ;-><br /><br />> . . .it's also so overkill. . .<br /><br />In other words, nobody knows at this point what's "overkill".jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-83701583280734336412012-07-15T12:18:35.502-07:002012-07-15T12:18:35.502-07:00> . . .a brain's physical substrate could
&...> . . .a brain's physical substrate could<br />> be replaced neuron by neuron without the overall<br />> consciousness supported thereby ever being interrupted<br />> or even disturbed, let alone duplicated. . .<br /><br />Note, however, that even granting a Moravec Transfer could<br />work with respect to the replaced neurons, those nanobot-neurons<br />would still have to respond to and generate the chemical<br />and electrical signals that bind an organic brain to its<br />body. The hormones of the endocrine system, and so on and<br />so forth. So there would still have to be a sophisticated<br />"interface" to an organic body.<br /><br />Unless you went on to simulate a body.<br /><br />And then you'd need a sophisticated "interface" to the real<br />world.<br /><br />Unless you went on to simulate the world.<br /><br />Greg Egan recognizes all this in _Permutation City_, of<br />course.<br /><br />;->jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-30172980823287927182012-07-15T12:11:51.452-07:002012-07-15T12:11:51.452-07:00> [H]ow can anyone believe in something like th...> [H]ow can anyone believe in something like the Moravec transfer?<br />> I don't just mean that it's ridiculous, but it's also so overkill<br /><br />Well, the attractiveness of the Moravec Transfer is primarily a<br />philosophical one.<br /><br />All scenarios for "uploading" or copying a human brain before that<br />had involved duplicating a brain. Even in the original<br />_Star Trek_ series we had Roger Korby's (and Captain Kirk's) android<br />duplicates in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" (Robert Bloch)<br />and later in TNG Riker getting duplicated in a "transporter<br />accident" and so on.<br /><br />The problem with uploading or immortalization via wholesale<br />duplication is that **somebody**<br />still has to die -- the one still stuck with the organic<br />body, presumably, whether you consider both entities<br />after the process "duplicates" or whether you consider<br />one the "original" and one the "duplicate", **one** of them<br />is still headed for the grave in the usual way.<br /><br />The coolness of the Moravec Transfer (setting aside its<br />practical implausibility) is that -- at least at our<br />**current** level of understanding of biological nervous<br />systems (and even that might turn out to be wrong) --<br />it seems plausible (at least as a **thought experiment**)<br />that a brain's physical substrate could<br />be replaced neuron by neuron without the overall<br />consciousness supported thereby ever being interrupted<br />or even disturbed, let alone duplicated. So there's<br />just one "entity" throughout the whole process,<br />anywhere on the spectrum -- the same person whether the<br />brain is 1% nanobots and 99% organic, or 50/50, or<br />99% nanobots and 1% organic, or finally 100% nanobots<br />and 0% organic. The **same person** is sitting there<br />even after an entire brain has been flushed down the<br />sink, neuron by neuron. No **person** ever dies (individual,<br />isolated neurons having no consciousness or personhood).<br />So the thought experiment goes, anyway.<br /><br />Again, somebody who knows (now) or will know (in 25 years) more<br />about how biological nervous systems actually function (whether<br />subcellular structures are necessary for the actual<br />signal processing going on in the brain, for example,<br />and are not just there because, like all living stuff, neurons<br />have to build proteins from transcribed DNA and make ATP from<br />glucose, and all the rest of it, just to exist at all) might<br />have other reasons (besides practicality) to say that a<br />Moravec Transfer, as envisioned above, simply wouldn't work.jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-30593156170625008832012-07-15T10:51:29.960-07:002012-07-15T10:51:29.960-07:00I always thought, Kurzweil is smart, someone smart...I always thought, Kurzweil is smart, someone smart like him should understand the problems involved in pumping a brain full of clanking diamondoid machines into the brain and somehow "interfacing" with it -- Both in general and specifically in the early 2020's.<br /><br />And how can anyone believe in something like the Moravec transfer? I don't just mean that it's ridiculous, but it's also so overkill: Replacing every neuron with a 'nanobot' that acts like it? Why not just slice the brain, scan it, edge-detect the slices, build a connectivity graph out of that, and run it in some kind of neuromorphic machine? That sure is far closer to reality than the diamond machines that will never be.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-65997590673083083932012-07-15T08:28:33.047-07:002012-07-15T08:28:33.047-07:00To be fair, there are more sober analyses of the p...To be fair, there are more sober analyses of the problem than<br />the recent bit of naive cheerleading on freethoughtblogs.com<br />posted by Chris Hallquist that was lampooned by P. Z. Myers.<br /><br />For example:<br /><br />"Does Personal Identity Survive Cryopreservation?"<br />by "Mike Darwin" (Mike Federowicz)<br />http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/02/23/does-personal-identity-survive-cryopreservation/<br /><br />The gist of Darwin's (very technical) article is that while it<br />is unlikely that, as Myers points out, the functioning state of<br />a living brain could be captured by any instantaneous scanning<br />process (a la a Star Trek transporter), it may nevertheless still be<br />true that enough information might be preserved in a properly<br />vitrified brain to contain the subject's personal identity, in some<br />meaningful sense. **Reconstructing** a duplicate brain (either a<br />biological one, or a software simulation) from<br />that information is a different question, of course, and Darwin<br />properly leaves that problem to the future (as cryonicists always have).<br /><br />And if you believe, as Kurzweil and others seem to, that computers<br />(even supercomputers, by today's standards -- the next or later generation<br />Blue Gene exascale processor, let's say) and robotic devices carrying<br />them, together with high-bandwidth communication links between<br />them, will be shrunk to sizes smaller than human neurons, and that<br />billions of them could be injected into a working human brain<br />and powered somehow (and cooled somehow, so that the brain doesn't<br />get cooked), then something like the MOravec Transfer becomes<br />plausible at least as a thought experiment (though the technology<br />to make that work seems pretty damned implausible at this point in<br />time). Each nanoscale exaprocessor/robot<br />might be able to hook up to, monitor, and finally mimic a given<br />neuron (or Edelmanian neuronal group of the "primary repertoire",<br />or whatever) well enough so that it could make a permanent connection<br />to adjoining biological neurons while a pruning nanobot disconnects the<br />hapless biological neuron and aspirates it into a drainage tube leading<br />to the sink. Rinse and repeat for all the 100 billion neurons in<br />a human brain. The subject might not, in theory, even notice anything happening<br />(other than, you know, being connected up to a bundle of tubes<br />and wires, having a pounding headache, and having his or her<br />head immersed in a bucket of ice).<br /><br />Something like this is used in some of Greg Egan's stories ("Learning<br />to be Me" primarily). In that story (and in others where the technology is<br />merely alluded to), something called an "Ndoli Dual" (or "Jewel"<br />as it's nicknamed) is inserted into a child's head and at some<br />point near adulthood, the duplicate takes over the body. (The<br />whole brain, or the cerebral cortex, or something, being disconnected<br />at that point -- whether it gets flushed down the sink, or<br />routed into the gut, like a post-nasal drip, to end up in the<br />toilet, I can't remember. ;-> )jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-61393080261487063492012-07-14T21:57:23.636-07:002012-07-14T21:57:23.636-07:00Robot Cultism sure makes people dumb.Robot Cultism sure makes people dumb.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-57626197775583427802012-07-14T20:29:15.274-07:002012-07-14T20:29:15.274-07:00I don't think PZ Myers is saying the same thin...I don't think PZ Myers is saying the same thing you are, beyond that Singularitarians are t3h st00pid. Such 19th-century engineers would have gotten the substance of contemporary transportation correct (minus the glorious part) if not the mechanism. Myers' argument in the linked piece resembles the position of friend-ai folks, who often question the reverse-engineering model. <br /><br />I'm also amused see a biologist mocking the technique of hacking things apart to understand them. It makes me smell the formaldehyde again.Summerspeakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07870660699983182559noreply@blogger.com