My point is that the wire diagram of the brain is fixed in part. And if you study neuroanatomy this will be clear to you. I'm not saying that it tells us ALL of the software of the brain. I'm only saying that SOME part of the software of the brain is fixed. I'm not saying we know what that fixed software is (although you can figure this out if you study neuroanatomy to a fine enough degree). We know this because we have created algorithms that are inspired by how the brain is wired and some of these algorithms have shown to be highly effective at doing things like noise cancellation in audio processing for example.
To get a fairly mechanistic understanding of some parts of the brain you could read a book like this Sensation and Perception, Seventh Edition by E. Bruce Goldstein <http://www.amazon.com/Sensation-Perception-7th-Seventh-Edition/dp/B008EPB56G> . On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 6:45 PM, Jim Bromer <[email protected]> wrote: > No one knows exactly how the brain works. Even the question of what is > software in a computer is a little subtle. For example, is it a bunch > of states of bits? Then it must be in the hardware. (Of course). Is it > a divot in the reflective surface of disk? (Hardware again?) [I had to > look up flash memory cards because I could not remember how EEPROMS > worked. It turns out that I may have never learned how they worked > until now.] But anyway, you should have gotten my point by now. > Software exists as an electrical or mechanical state somewhere. Does > that mean that I truly know how computers work. Could I write a > program that usefully simulated or conveyed deep insights about how > computers worked? No of course not. I would not know where to start. I > could make something up and come up with some crude model but that is > all it would be. But let's say that a master engineer in the business > knew a great deal about how computers worked. Does that mean that he > knows everything about software that there is to know? Of course not. > If something like that were true then we would all be wasting our time > talking to anyone other than top computer (hardware) engineers. > > I know much less about how the brain works than I do about how computers > work. > > Jim Bromer > > On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 3:33 PM, Benjamin Kapp <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > The software of the brain is the hardware. That is to say the neurons > and their firing and not firing and their connections between each other > are the software of the brain. The wiring diagram of the eye is relatively > predetermined as is that of the brain at least initially. For example > normal humans have a corpus callosum which is a bunch of neuron connections > across the two hemispheres. Without this humans seem to have two > independent brains. And so if we were to say look at this big connection > between the two hemispheres, it shouldn't be rebuffed "oh you are just > looking at hardware and can't make any determinations as to pre-wiring of > the software".. because that is exactly what the corpus callosum is, and > more generally what the gross anatomical regularities found across brains > is. > > > > On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 2:57 PM, Jim Bromer <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 2:45 PM, Benjamin Kapp <[email protected]> > wrote: > >>> > >>> It seems to me that the brain is hard wired in certain ways. For > example the eye is considered part of the brain and its design is largely > entirely predetermined. And the brain as a whole as the same folds in the > same places across brains (on average), and not having such a design often > leads to abnormal mental function. In so far as the brain is a model for > how to go about creating AGI perhaps this stands as example that not > everything needs to be dynamically created by experience. > >> > >> > >> > >> That is not right. If you look at the hardware of a computer you would > not be able to infer the dynamic relations (and the potential of the > dynamic references and abstractions) of the software. (This is an old AI > discussion group standard argument by the way,) So we cannot be sure > exactly what the human brain is doing. (That's a I-don't-know-I only work > here kind of argument.) > >> > >> > >> > >>> > >>> > >>> On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Jim Bromer <[email protected]> > wrote: > >>>> > >>>> I certainly don't mean that all structure has to be ad hoc. Some > structure has to be implemented and there is no reason why default > conceptualizations might be used, but in general the structure of a concept > and the conceptual background that the concept is going to be applied to > has to be learned. Just as I did not mean that all conceptual structure has > to be ad hoc I also don't mean to suggest that all concepts can be acquired > as individual objects. > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> Jim Bromer > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/26973278-698fd9ee > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
