Eugen wrote:
Of course a point could be made that reconstructing function from
structure (which in principle can be obtained from vitrified brain sections at arbitrary resolution) is less far off than AI bootstrap.
I personally feel AI bootstrap is significantly closer, but arguing about relative timing of uncertain advances probably isn't that productive (at least, for it to be productive it would need to become a way more in-depth technical conversation) BTW I am not sure your statement about reconstructing function from structure being achievable via studying vitrified brain sections is correct. The problem is dynamics. Reconstructing brain function from a series of time-slices of brain-state, is a well-defined math problem, though perhaps a very hard computational problem. However, reconstructing the dynamics of a system from a single time-slice is a well-defined math problem only if one includes the laws of physics into the picture -- and we do not know how to apply the laws of physics to systems on the scale and complexity of brains in a computationally tractable way, with sufficient detail to reconstruct system dynamics from a single time-slice. And, of course vitrification does not give us a series of time-slices of brain-state. At best it gives us one time-slice of certain very important aspects of the state. Thus, I suspect that advances in brain scanning technology are what are going to give us the ability to reconstruct brain function. Give it another 15-25 years and we'll have the spatiotemporal resolution of brain scanning to gather the data whose analysis will allow us to really understand the beauty and absurdity of what goes on in our brains... -- Ben G -- Ben ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
