The Future of the Mind

[Vraith]

Now in the case of sentience, of self-awareness, it might be imitated to perfection but you will never know whether it's real or not; you might pass Laws to protect it, you might have to apply exactly the same ethics in your treatment of it - but you can never say 'it is' with any degree of surety. Surely?

Well...take that standard to its natural, complete conclusion:
We can't/don't/will never know whether OUR's is real or not.
At a certain point, your machine has just as much right to look at you and say "Is that thing really sentient and self-aware? After all it's just a bunch protein's slinging chemicals around."

We're not painting Mona Lisa's...we're wondering about what happens if/when the Mona Lisa starts painting itself.

The problem with your clone, though::you may never believe it is really "you."...and it isn't...especially if "you" happen to be the clone and just think you are the "real" you.

And yet others think we'll just absorb them into humanity as we become more robotic ourselves, a marriage of man and machine. They won't take over and make us obsolete, because we'll merge with them.

I go back and forth, depending on mood, on whether I think this WILL happen. But I think the tech will eventually make it an option...and merger would be the best one. [[heh, usually I imagine this as living a whole ordinary/purely biological human life...then install the add-ons and rejuve the flesh.]]

[Zarathustra]

[/color]
I go back and forth, depending on mood, on whether I think this WILL happen.

It's happening now. You should read the book.

[Vraith]

[/color]
I go back and forth, depending on mood, on whether I think this WILL happen.

It's happening now. You should read the book.

Yea...I plan to get the book, I know some limited things exist, better things are right around the corner...

By doubts on whether it WILL happen, it's my social pessimist rising up. When it becomes [almost inevitable, and not that far away] cheap and easy and isn't just "healing the lame," but fun, cool, enhancing...the nut-jobs will start coming out. [[maybe I've seen too many dystopic/speculative Luddite visions in fiction...have you noticed [I'm sure you have] how often cyborg stuff is unmitigated evil? Even when it isn't intentionally destroying our "humanity" or our "souls," it does so accidentally, just by existing, the nature of what they are?]

I sometimes fear the reactions to advancements by the tens or maybe hundreds of millions of folk who think the earth is less than 10k years old, some kinds of math are evil, and medical science is defiling/playing God.

Now, I think those folk will lose in the end...but it could get bloody ugly for a bit.

[peter]

In a million years from now will we be 'the hards' and 'the softs' and will the hards laugh at the ridiculous idea that they 'evolved'/were created by the softs. It will be too incredible to contemplate; no - beyond question the hards were Created in the image of the Ultimate Hard One who created the Universe and all in it for their, and their benefit alone.

Here's some difficult questions that the book has not adressed to date [and in fairness they are probably outside its remit - but I'm interested in them anyway].

It concerns what we know about how the brain works in terms of relating 'structure to function'. We have had the brains various areas described to us - the Cerebral cortex, cerebellum, limbic brain etc - and been told what each area 'does' [cerebral cortex, concious thinking - limbic, emotions, cerebellum, automatic etc...]. But what we have not been told [indeed, do we know] is 'how' it is that these functions come to be performed specifically be the various parts of the brain they are attributed to. In terms of fine structure we have had the neurones with its axons and dendtrites, its myelin sheaths described to us, and we have been amazed by the billions upon countless billions of connections that constitute the neural network. But why do the neurones of the limbic brain do different stuff to the neurones of the cerebrum? They look the same; they 'fire' or 'don't fire' the same; how is it that this white 'sameness' organises itself into areas to do all of this different stuff. And is it all the same for all of us?

When I look at a 'heart' I can see it's funtion and structure in relation to each other - and I can see the same for a liver, and I can see they're different. Surely at some level the same has to be true for the brain - it can't just be 'number of connections' can it, otherwise functions could be shifted around the brain ad libertum [which is not demonstrated by animals with parts of their brain removed {I forget the technical term for this}].

Also, we know the cerebral cortex is folded to increase it's surface area but why? This feature is always an indication that a surface is involved in 'transport' of something from one side to the other [the villus of the gut lining, the alveolar surface of the lung]. What is being transported across the surface of the brain? I know the brain is 'bathed' in a fluid contained within the meninges layers, but is this how the brain acesses it's glucose?

Moving back from the physiology to the speculative areas - If we truly get to grips with what the brain is and how it does it, to the point where we can enhance our own mental capabilities, then surely the same will be the case for animals. Surely we will bestow the gift of conciousness, of self awareness and intelligence to our fellow inhabitants of the world. Surely we will stretch out our hand and from their darkness promote them?

[Zarathustra]

As for the different areas of the brain performing different functions, I think this explained in terms of the evolutionary sequence in which these functions were developed. Our brain contains the history of this sequence in its structure. A "reptillian" brain evolved to handle very basic things like autonomic functions and movement in a 3-d environment. This structure is still with us today. Then additional layers were built on top of that, each with the capacity to do things which weren't handled by the previous.

But the brain is very "plastic," in that we can affect its functioning to a great extent with our own efforts. Learning is a great example: you literally change the structure of your brain by learning new things. You cause neurons to fire in different patterns, and continued practice reinforces this firing by harnessing ever more neurons to that task. This is how things become habit. So perhaps this same "learning" happened on an evolutionary scale, too, so that habits were preprogrammed (instincts) in the form of preexisting structures.

However, different areas of the brain can learn to compensate for damage to other parts, taking over previous functions. For instance, we can remove an entire hemisphere, and a person will still be able to function. So perhaps the functions aren't absolutely dependent upon the structures. A bit of "rewiring" can take place.

[Fist and Faith]

My impression is that Peter is asking how Neuron 13,765,343 knows that it is Neuron 13,765,343, and that it, in conjunction with a few million neurons around it, performs this specific function. Similarly, I've always wondered how the DNA in Liver Cell 43,654 knows that it is in Liver Cell 43,654, and that it must have the cell do what it does. How does that DNA know that it is not in Heart Cell 56,898?

[Vraith]

Pretty much all of what Z said.
Two things I know about the wrinkles [there may be others]...first it allows for more brain in the same size skull [our heads are already too big for our necks in a a lot of ways...getting even bigger/heavier and/or thinning the skull to decrease weight would be selected against...too vulnerable].
Also, being wrinkly makes shorter pathways for neurons to connect...for conducting things, shorter is pretty much always better. Among other things, longer neurons would mean, by definition, slower thinking speed/reaction time.

And interesting thing, fairly recent [at least to me], probably at least one causal factor in the plasticity/flexibility/hemisphere stuff. Although it still seems that certain "areas" have some dedication and localization and are sort of "control points," the entire process of thinking seems to spread throughout the brain...and the different areas "argue"/"debate" with each other. So it isn't really a boss/worker hierarchy...nor is it a completely distributed network. It's a mix. And there are indications/hints that an array of problems arise BECAUSE some particular area has too much control. [I haven't seen anything to suggest that too much cooperation between sectors causes problems...more dispersion seems to be a good thing. So far.]

Saw an article somewhere recently...some watcher may have linked it...saying to dump the left brain/right brain model. It's really a vertical layer separation. I think it was 4 or 5.

Basic fact contradiction: there are MANY different kinds of neurons. Like 100 or 2.

On enhancing animals: Look up Brin [the author, not the Watcher Brinn, nor the Haruchai Brinn] Uplift books.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

And yet others think we'll just absorb them into humanity as we become more robotic ourselves, a marriage of man and machine. They won't take over and make us obsolete, because we'll merge with them.

I go back and forth, depending on mood, on whether I think this WILL happen. But I think the tech will eventually make it an option...and merger would be the best one. [[heh, usually I imagine this as living a whole ordinary/purely biological human life...then install the add-ons and rejuve the flesh.]]

I would willingly merge with robotic components and become a cyborg--enhanced vision, enhanced durability, enhanced memory, and enhanced reflexes while retaining my mental acuity, emotional framework, and memories. Truthfully I see only positive outcomes in this--we lose some disadvantages while also gaining other advantages. Sometimes I regret that I probably won't live long enough to see this sort of possibility become a reality but maybe I will get lucky and such things will arrive earlier than I think they will.

[Vraith]

Sometimes I regret that I probably won't live long enough to see this sort of possibility become a reality but maybe I will get lucky and such things will arrive earlier than I think they will.

Hee hee...when it's revealed peeps can go get this done, look around for the ancient dude with a cane hobbling as fast as he can to get in front of you in line and just say "Hey, Vraith, nice to meet you."

[peter]

This is true Z. in respect of the evolution of the various 'layers' or areas certainly - but it is still referencing the 'gross' structure rather than the manner in which at the cellular level the neorones of the limbic area decide [bad word but you know....] 'We're going to do emotions stuff' and the cerebron says 'we're going to do concious thought stuff'. This overlayering of different function has to be manifest in a [micro] structural difference somewhere - and as it happens I think the book went onto point this out in my reading last night. two things arise. First it appears that the actual cellular organisation is different in different areas. The book talks of 'columns' of cells differing between various parts. Second the 'wiring' of the brain interms of the arrangement or neural connections in the various areas seems to be different. This in turn creates a mass of differing 'feedback loops' and pathways, specific to each brain area - and it is only when we understand the functioning of all of these and how they interact that we will truly have an understanding of the brain, and there will be millions of them. What we are doing at the moment is the basic anatomy, the hard work of understanding how all this fits together and transforms itself into the functional entity we all posess has barely begun.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Hee hee...when it's revealed peeps can go get this done, look around for the ancient dude with a cane hobbling as fast as he can to get in front of you in line and just say "Hey, Vraith, nice to meet you."

You may be underestimating my age a little.

A cane? *pfft* I will get fitted with a lower-body exoskeleton so I can still walk on my own. Of course, at that point I would get the upper-body part, as well.

[Vraith]

Hee hee...when it's revealed peeps can go get this done, look around for the ancient dude with a cane hobbling as fast as he can to get in front of you in line and just say "Hey, Vraith, nice to meet you."

You may be underestimating my age a little.

A cane? *pfft* I will get fitted with a lower-body exoskeleton so I can still walk on my own. Of course, at that point I would get the upper-body part, as well.

I was just assuming [I think I'm right] I'm JUST ENOUGH older than you that i will need assistance [cane, person...a Segway?], if I'm still alive, in order to be fast enough to beat you as first through the doors to buy my new pieces and parts.

peter...the network/interconnections/all that stuff you mention: yea, freaking COMPLICATED, just getting started even though we probably have learned more about it in the last 2 or 3 years than in all of history before that.
If I had to guess, I'd make a bet that the growth in neuroscience in the last five years has been the fastest growth in knowledge in any field ever. Even bigger and faster than Einsteins breakthrough.

Here's another thing I'd make a bet on: I'd bet anything we will be able to physically/technologically build/manufacture perfectly functional mind-enhancing devices/interfaces LONG before we understand all the reasons and functions underlying the "mind." Just like we built wagons and boats without knowing anything much besides round things roll and wood floats.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I was just assuming [I think I'm right] I'm JUST ENOUGH older than you that i will need assistance [cane, person...a Segway?], if I'm still alive, in order to be fast enough to beat you as first through the doors to buy my new pieces and parts.

Hover chair. I will defer to your more advanced decrepitude.

Here's another thing I'd make a bet on: I'd bet anything we will be able to physically/technologically build/manufacture perfectly functional mind-enhancing devices/interfaces LONG before we understand all the reasons and functions underlying the "mind." Just like we built wagons and boats without knowing anything much besides round things roll and wood floats.

I agree. Like most technologies we'll make it up and play catch up as we go along.

[peter]

Finished the book last night and as per Z. I'm slightly bemused by the change in tone [not quite sure how else to describe it] of the last section of the book. I's almost as if Kaku is backtracking on all his earlier 'mechanistic' approaches and is introducing a non-deterministic [boardering on mystical] view of conciousness.

I did not realise that the strong form of the Anthropic Principle demanded the exisrence of a creator but

The strong form of the Anthropic Principle goes even further stating that God or some desighner had to create the Universe 'just right' to make it possible

Kaku winds up by effectively saying that he does not think it is possible to create a man-made conciousness that is any more than an [all be it very close] simulacrum of the real thing. If I have got it correct it is the very non-deterministic effects of the quantum universe and their allowal of free-will in our conciousness that ultimately will be the stumbling block upon which such an ebdevour will fail. [nb I'm sure Z. will correct me if I have failed to grasp or convey what Kaku was trying to say in his final paragraphs]. In conclusion I'd like to quote just one little section that gives expression to the true enormity of the task this research faces.

Dr Dharmendra Mhoda of IBM has partially simulated a section of the human brain using the state of the art Blue Gene Computer, mimicking about 4.5% of the interactions between the cortex and the thalamus. In his oppinion a partial simulation of these interactions should be possible by around 2020, using around 880,000 processors. Thinking further ahead he estimates what might be needed to create a working model of the entire human brain in it's infant [ie clean slate] state.

He envisions not just a single Blue Gene computer, but thousands of them, which would fill up not just a room but an entire city block. The energy consumption will be so great that you will need a thousand-megawatt nuclear power plant to generate the energy, and then to cool off this monstrous computer so it wouldnt melt, you would need to divet a river and send it through the computer circuits. It is remarkable that a gigantic city-size computer is needed to simulate a piece of human tissue that weighs three pounds, fits inside your skull, raisws your body temperature by only a few degrees, uses 20 watts of power and needs only a few hamburgers to keep it going.

[Vraith]

Thinking further ahead he estimates what might be needed to create a working model of the entire human brain in it's infant [ie clean slate] state.

He envisions not just a single Blue Gene computer, but thousands of them, which would fill up not just a room but an entire city block. The energy consumption will be so great that you will need a thousand-megawatt nuclear power plant to generate the energy, and then to cool off this monstrous computer so it wouldnt melt, you would need to divet a river and send it through the computer circuits. It is remarkable that a gigantic city-size computer is needed to simulate a piece of human tissue that weighs three pounds, fits inside your skull, raisws your body temperature by only a few degrees, uses 20 watts of power and needs only a few hamburgers to keep it going.

I think that he might just be bad at thinking ahead. I won't argue the time it might take...just no good way to guess, given what I know and don't know.
But the machine? You know, your cell phone would have to be roughly the size of Manhattan, use polar ice-caps to cool it, and power equal to NYC daily consumption...if it were built from the same tech and materials as the first computers.

[peter]

Fair comment - the problem of this 'picture' being one if simple 'terms of scale' had occured to me. My personal feeling is the issue goes much deeper than that; the science does not yet seem to have answered the question of what 'mind' actually is as yet [or if it has done, somehow I missed it in the book somewhere]. By this I mean whether thought is simply the electrical activity of the cells alone [ie the patterns and strengths etc, in which case it should be 'easily' reproducable outside the brain, just on a different substructure once we know and understand the patterns etc], or whether the 'wetware' is actually intrinsically involved at yet a deeper level than simple electrical activity.

[Fist and Faith]

Very interesting. The ability to delay gratification (have one marshmallow now, or two in twenty minutes) is a much better indicator of future success than IQ.

I wonder how ambition could be tested.

[Zarathustra]

The point about delayed gratification being the chief indicator of success should be drilled into every student. I'm worried about a future built on the impatient children of today, who can't even go a few minutes without their gratification being fulfilled by some electronic device. Kids don't have to deal with boredom anymore. They don't have to develop their imagination or seek out more fulfilling ways to fill their time, because someone else's imagination can so easily fill the gap.

The point about simulating the brain with a gigantic computer doesn't miss the point of shrinking technology ... it makes the point. The brain is an example of the ultimate "shrinking" of "technology" by nature. Nature mastered nanotech millions of years ago, working bottom-up. We're taking the opposite approach, and working backwards from top-down. While those two approaches will one day meet in the middle, the point of the example was to show just how far we still have to go. And it's an illustration of how little we understand the brain, and (as Peter points out) hints at the possibility that consciousness may be something much "deeper" than our reductionist approaches can ever reproduce. In building from the bottom-up, nature may have mastered levels of organization which can't be reached by reductionism (i.e. breaking things down to their constituent parts), and rather achieves more holistic results where things become more than the sum of their parts. This is true to an extent with our human technologies (i.e. a TV is more than wires and transistors), but only with the addition of human intellect. The spontaneous, emergent properties of naturally ordered systems might work entirely differently than our artificial approximations.

[Vraith]

Very interesting. The ability to delay gratification (have one marshmallow now, or two in twenty minutes) is a much better indicator of future success than IQ.

I wonder how ambition could be tested.

That's true, from what I've seen...but there are many things that are better predictors than IQ.
You should go look at recent research on factors related to the ability to wait, or not. There are some surprises for folk who might be tempted to think delaying is just a matter of thinking and deciding and willpower.

On this:

And it's an illustration of how little we understand the brain, and (as Peter points out) hints at the possibility that consciousness may be something much "deeper" than our reductionist approaches can ever reproduce. In building from the bottom-up, nature may have mastered levels of organization which can't be reached by reductionism (i.e. breaking things down to their constituent parts),

I'm a yes and no at the same time on this. I think intelligence/consciousness will come about by "reducing" to parts.
Because I think in/among the parts, once a certain scale and system organization is reached, things happen that we don't understand [yet]. The size may be far less important than the complexity, unless some quantum property is necessary...but for practical reasons, including efficiency, smaller is surely better [for SOME things ]
For instance, the most successful approaches recently that I'm aware of have an aspect of the unknown happening, but still being connected to reducing [this relates to some Penrose/algorithm things you're aware of Z]:
The machines are extremely networked and multi-parallel processing. But the programs/algorithms are very few and very general...almost heuristic.
And these machines learn tasks [limited ones...but they learn it for themselves, from interacting with the environment, and they get better at it]
They write their own code. [[often shorter, more efficient and effective code than people can write, IIRC]]

Bottom up surely is how we came about. But it took billions of years.
And, if consciousness/intelligence arises as a natural property of scale, connections, and flows...well, there's no reason why we can't create AI without knowing exactly how or why it works.
I'm fairly certain, speculatively, that that's exactly how we will do it.
I mean...if you have the right tools, and a diagram, you can make a functioning watch without knowing anything about what/how/why watches work.
Almost everyone can paint by numbers without knowing a damn thing about art.
[[heh...although making one without knowing those answers is a large part of what makes AI scary]]

Anyone who finds this thread interesting might want to look at Vernor Vinge. Some pretty good novels, basically invented the idea of "cyberspace" and a math/Comp Sci guy.
In the early 90's he said "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended."
So we only got about 10 years left
his wiki bio:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge

[peter]

Reductionism may indeed be a poor tool in dealing with something as complex as the brain/mind relationship....but it may be the best we have got. It is difficult to see how else to approach the problem [and in fairness it has by and large serves science pretty well to date].

I was interested in Z.'s comment about drilling into all students the relationship between delayed gratification and likely future sucess. Would this still work? Is this just not an indicator of, rather than a tecnique for increasing sucess chances. If the ability to spot the bennefits of the delayed gratification approach were not already intrinsic to the individual is it likely that their sucess chances would be effected by adoption of it in the same way [which of course is not to discount the simple bennefits that will naturally follow from such a policy. But then perhaps the simple bennefits ARE the increased sucess chances. Hmmm...]

An experiment/study occured to me that if it has not been performed, then certainly should be. We have at our disposal one of the highest forms of mental activity that humans can aspire to, that already we have created silicon 'minds' that can outstrip our own - that of playing chess.

Surely interesting results could be gained from recording both in film and brain electrical activity, the proceedings of a world master playing chess with a computer such as deep blue. We know the computers activity as the game progresses - we can see it. from the human we could record what areas of the brain are active at what points of the game, when a given insight or scheme is hatched, when a particular defeat or danger is encountered, and even in the interim, between moves points, when the mind naturally wanders. Would not such a study yield valuable insight into both the similarities and differences in the 'mental' activities occuring in both the machine and the man. Surely this has been done?