On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Monday, February 18, 2013 9:30:49 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: >> >> >> >> >> There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain >> and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as >> being not computable. > > > Yes, I posted it just to show that someone who works closely with both > neurology and consciousness professionally comes to the same conclusion that > I have.
One of the problems of relying on expert opinions is that, sometimes, it's hard to see clearly what someone is an expert at. I had a look at Nicolelis' lab publication list and there isn't anything there to suggest that they even look into the issue of consciousness. It's a lot of (interesting sounding) work on neural correlates for sensorial and motor activities, as well as applications. A few issues with his position: - Just because the brain has a certain level of complexity, doesn't mean it has to. The brain is restricted by a fixed palette of evolutionary building blocks. It cannot take advantage of, say, sillicon chips. We can build machines that move faster and are simples than any animal, although there's evolutionary pressure for speed. Still, no animals with wheels; - There is no evolutionary pressure for good design; - There is no evolutionary pressure for understandability; > It seems like a handy thing to have when one is accused of being > ignorant of science or anti-science. It turns out that its only prejudice > that makes these kinds of accusation in this case. Ok. > As far as the stock market being computable, how would you go about > determining, for instance, whether or not I rebalance my 401k and on what > day and time? The stock market is a bad comparison, because it is made of brains to begin with. So it's the same problem x10^10. > The brain has the same issue - you can't tell what it is going to do from > the outside, because the behavior on the outside is often driven by the > story going on the inside - which cannot be known unless you too are on the > inside. Why isn't a complete description of the brain state sufficient? (disregarding the necessary computational power) Telmo. > > Craig > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
