Re: An analogy for Qualia
On Dec 22 2011, 12:18 pm, alexalex alexmka...@yahoo.com wrote: Hello, Everythinglisters! The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent. I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear your opinion about what it says. Thanks! A simpler model of the world with different points of view It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence, mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a priori defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what they're discussing about even though as far as I've been able to understand they don't display the slightest scant of evidence which would show that they believe there will ever be a theory that could bridge the gap between the ineffable what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of personal experience and the scientific, objective descriptions of reality. The 1s and 0s that make the large variety of 3D design software on the market today are all we need in order to bring to virtual-reality whatever model of our real world we desire. Those 1s and 0s, which are by the way as physical as the neurons in your brain though not of the same assortment (see below), are further arranged into sub-modules that are further integrated into other different parts and subsystems of the computer onto which the software they are part of is running on, so their arrangement is obviously far from aleatory. One needs to adopt the intentional stance in order to understand the intricacies, details and roles that these specific particular modules play in this large and complex computer programs. If you had the desire you could bring to virtual reality any city of the world you want. Let's for example take the city of Rome. Every monument, restaurant, hospital, park, mall and police department can be accounted for in a detailed, virtual replica which we can model using one of these 3D modeling programs. Every car, plane and boat, even the people and their biomechanics are so well represented that we could easily mistake the computer model for the real thing. Here we are looking at the monitor screen from our God-like-point-of-view. All the points, lines, 2D-planes and 3D objects in this digital presentation have their properties and behavior ruled by simulated laws of physics which are identical to the laws encountered in our real world. These objects and the laws that govern them are 100% traceable to the 1s and 0s, that is, to the voltages and transistors on the silica chips that make up the computer onto which the software is runs on. We have a 100% description of the city of Rome in our computer in the sense that there is no object in that model that we can't say all there is to say about it and the movement of the points, lines and planes which compose it because they're all accounted for in the 0s and 1s saved on the hard-drive and then loaded into the RAM and video-RAM of our state of the art video graphics card. Let's call that perspective, the perspective of knowing all there is to know about the 3D-model, the third-person perspective (the perspective described by using only third-party objective data). What's interesting is that all of these 3D design programs have the option to add cameras to whatever world model you are currently developing. Cameras present a scene from a particular point-of-view (POV – or point of reference, call it how you will). Camera objects simulate still-image, motion picture, or video cameras in the real world and have the same usage here. The benefit of cameras is that you can position them anywhere within a scene to offer a custom view. You can imagine that camera not only as a point of view but also as an area point of view (all the light reflected from the objects in your particular world model enter the lens of the camera), but for our particular mental exercise this doesn't matter. What you need to know is that our virtual cameras can perfectly simulate real world cameras and all the optical science of the lens is integrated in the program making the simulated models similar to the ones that are found real life. We’ll use POVs and CPOVs interchangeably from now on; they mean the same thing in the logic of our argumentation. The point-of-view (POV) of the camera is obviously completely traceable and mathematically deducible from the third-person perspective of the current model we are simulating and from the physical characteristics of the virtual lens built into the camera through which the light reflected of the objects in the model is projected (Bare in mind that the physical properties and optics of the lens are also simulated by the computer model). Of course, the software does all that calculation and drawing for you. But if you had the ambition you could
Re: An analogy for Qualia
On 09 Jan 2012, at 06:56, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 3:36 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But naturalism want to explain things by reducing it to nature or natural law, If you want to explain X you say that X exists because of Y. It's true that Y can be nothing and thus the existence of X is random, but let's assume that Y is something;in that case if you don't want to call Y natural law what do you want to call it? In the case which concerns us, Y is elementary arithmetic. Computationalism asks for an explanation for the natural laws, And if found those explanations would be yet more natural laws; After all you can. Elementary arithmetic is the study of *natural* numbers. But that would be a pun. however we don't know that there is a explanation for everything, some things might be fundamental. Yes. In the case of elementary arithmetic, we can even explain why we cannot explain it by something more fundamental. There are logical reason for that. But this is not the case for matter and consciousness, which admit an explanation from arithmetic. I have a hunch that consciousness is fundamental and it's just the way data feels like when it's being processed; Then it is not fundamental, and you have to search an explanation why some data, when processed, can lead to consciousness. If you define consciousness by the undoubtable belief in at least one reality, it can be explained why numbers develop such belief. But there is a price which is also a gift: you have to explain the appearance of matter from the numbers too, and physics is no more the fundamental science. The gift is that we get a complete conceptual explanation of where the physical realities come from. the trouble is that even if consciousness is fundamental a proof of that fact probably does not exist, so people will continue to invent consciousness theories trying to explain it till the end of time but none of those theories will be worth a bucket of warm spit. That's your opinion. The fact is that we can explain, even prove, that natural numbers are not explainable from less, and we can explain entirely matter, and 99,9% of consciousness from the numbers too, and this in a testable way (I'm not pretending that numbers provide the correct explanation). And we can explain completely why it remains 0.1% of consciousness which cannot be explained, by pure number logical self-reference limitation. This does not mean it is always meaningful to ask what is that made of?. It is until you get to something fundamental, You seem here to have difficulties to conceive that Aristotle primary matter hypothesis might be wrong. then all you can say is that's just the way things are. If that is unsatisfactory then direct your rage at the universe. But perhaps you can always find something more fundamental, but I doubt it, I think consciousness is probably the end of the line. That is already refuted once you take seriously the mechanist hypothesis. Consciousness is explained by semantical fixed point of Turing universal self-transformations. It leads to a testable theory of qualia and quanta (X1* in my papers). There are no thing made of something. Good heavens, if we can't agree even that at least sometimes somethings are made of parts we will be chasing our intellectual tails forever going nowhere. Something are made of parts. But not of fundamental parts. Time, space, energy, quantum states all belong to the imagination or tools of numbers looking at their origin, and we can explain why (relative) numbers develop that well founded imagination, and why some of it is persistent and sharable among many numbers. Imagination does not mean 'unreal', but it means not ontologically primary real. The idea of things being made of something is still Aristotelian. Aristotle like most philosophers liked to write about stuff that every person on the planet knows to be obviously true and state that fact to the world in inflated language as if he'd made a great discovery. Of course most things are made of parts, although I'm not too sure about electrons, they might be fundamental. Plato invented science, including theology, by taking some distance from the animal lasting intuition that their neighborhoods are primary real or WYSIWYG. Aristotle just came back to that animal intuition, which of course is very satisfying for our animal natural intuition. But mechanism has been shown to be incompatible with it. (Weak) materialism will be abandonned, in the long run, as being a natural superstition. Matter is only the border of the universal mind, which is the mind of universal numbers. The theory of mind becomes computer science (itself branch of arithmetic), and fundamental physics becomes a sub-branch of it. If mechanism is true, there are only true number
Re: An analogy for Qualia
On Jan 9, 6:06 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I agree with your general reply to Craig, but I disagree that computations are physical. That's the revisionist conception of computation, defended by Deustch, Landauer, etc. Computations have been discovered by mathematicians when trying to expalin some foundational difficulties in pure mathematics. Mathematicians aren't physical? Computations are discovered through a living nervous system, one that has been highly developed and conditioned specifically for that purpose. We can implement computation in the physical worlds, but that means only that the physical reality is (at least) Turing universal. Theoretical computer science is a branch of pure mathematics, even completely embeddable in arithmetical truth. And pure mathematics is a branch of anthropology. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: An analogy for Qualia
On 09 Jan 2012, at 14:50, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Jan 9, 6:06 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I agree with your general reply to Craig, but I disagree that computations are physical. That's the revisionist conception of computation, defended by Deustch, Landauer, etc. Computations have been discovered by mathematicians when trying to expalin some foundational difficulties in pure mathematics. Mathematicians aren't physical? Computations are discovered through a living nervous system, one that has been highly developed and conditioned specifically for that purpose. Computation and mechanism have been discovered by many people since humans are there. It is related to the understanding of the difference between finite and infinite. The modern notion has been discovered independently by many mathematicians, notably Emil Post, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, Andrzei Markov, etc. With the comp. hyp., this is easily explainable, given that we are somehow made of (in some not completely Aristotelian sense to be sure) computations. We can implement computation in the physical worlds, but that means only that the physical reality is (at least) Turing universal. Theoretical computer science is a branch of pure mathematics, even completely embeddable in arithmetical truth. And pure mathematics is a branch of anthropology. I thought you already agreed that the arithmetical truth are independent of the existence of humans, from old posts you write. Explain me, please, how the truth or falsity of the Riemann hypothesis, or of Goldbach conjecture depend(s) on anthropology. Please, explain me how the convergence or divergence of phi_(j) depends on the existence of humans (with phi_i = the ith computable function in an enumeration based on some universal system). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: An analogy for Qualia
On Jan 9, 12:00 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 09 Jan 2012, at 14:50, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Jan 9, 6:06 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I agree with your general reply to Craig, but I disagree that computations are physical. That's the revisionist conception of computation, defended by Deustch, Landauer, etc. Computations have been discovered by mathematicians when trying to expalin some foundational difficulties in pure mathematics. Mathematicians aren't physical? Computations are discovered through a living nervous system, one that has been highly developed and conditioned specifically for that purpose. Computation and mechanism have been discovered by many people since humans are there. It is related to the understanding of the difference between finite and infinite. The modern notion has been discovered independently by many mathematicians, notably Emil Post, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, Andrzei Markov, etc. With the comp. hyp., this is easily explainable, given that we are somehow made of (in some not completely Aristotelian sense to be sure) computations. They are making those discoveries by using their physical brain though. We can implement computation in the physical worlds, but that means only that the physical reality is (at least) Turing universal. Theoretical computer science is a branch of pure mathematics, even completely embeddable in arithmetical truth. And pure mathematics is a branch of anthropology. I thought you already agreed that the arithmetical truth are independent of the existence of humans, from old posts you write. Explain me, please, how the truth or falsity of the Riemann hypothesis, or of Goldbach conjecture depend(s) on anthropology. Please, explain me how the convergence or divergence of phi_(j) depends on the existence of humans (with phi_i = the ith computable function in an enumeration based on some universal system). The whole idea of truth or falsity in the first place depends on humans capacities to interpret experiences in those terms. We can read this quality of truth or falsity into many aspects of our direct and indirect experience, but that doesn't mean that the quality itself is external to us. If you look at a starfish, you can see it has five arms, but the starfish doesn't necessarily know it had five arms. What about arabic numerals? Seeing how popular their spread has been on Earth after humans, shouldn't we ask why those numerals, given an arithmetic universal primitive, are not present in nature independently of literate humans? If indeed all qualia, feeling, color, sounds, etc are a consequence of arithmetic, why not the numerals themselves? Why should they be limited to human minds and writings? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: An analogy for Qualia
On 1/9/2012 19:54, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Jan 9, 12:00 pm, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 09 Jan 2012, at 14:50, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Jan 9, 6:06 am, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I agree with your general reply to Craig, but I disagree that computations are physical. That's the revisionist conception of computation, defended by Deustch, Landauer, etc. Computations have been discovered by mathematicians when trying to expalin some foundational difficulties in pure mathematics. Mathematicians aren't physical? Computations are discovered through a living nervous system, one that has been highly developed and conditioned specifically for that purpose. Computation and mechanism have been discovered by many people since humans are there. It is related to the understanding of the difference between finite and infinite. The modern notion has been discovered independently by many mathematicians, notably Emil Post, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, Andrzei Markov, etc. With the comp. hyp., this is easily explainable, given that we are somehow made of (in some not completely Aristotelian sense to be sure) computations. They are making those discoveries by using their physical brain though. Sure, but that requires one to better understand what a physical brain is. In the case of COMP(given some basic assumptions), matter is explained as appearing from simpler abstract mathematical relations, in which case, a brain would be an inevitable consequence of such relations. We can implement computation in the physical worlds, but that means only that the physical reality is (at least) Turing universal. Theoretical computer science is a branch of pure mathematics, even completely embeddable in arithmetical truth. And pure mathematics is a branch of anthropology. I thought you already agreed that the arithmetical truth are independent of the existence of humans, from old posts you write. Explain me, please, how the truth or falsity of the Riemann hypothesis, or of Goldbach conjecture depend(s) on anthropology. Please, explain me how the convergence or divergence of phi_(j) depends on the existence of humans (with phi_i = the ith computable function in an enumeration based on some universal system). The whole idea of truth or falsity in the first place depends on humans capacities to interpret experiences in those terms. We can read this quality of truth or falsity into many aspects of our direct and indirect experience, but that doesn't mean that the quality itself is external to us. If you look at a starfish, you can see it has five arms, but the starfish doesn't necessarily know it had five arms. Yet that the fact the starfish has 5 arms is a fact, regardless of the starfish's awareness of it. It will have many consequences with regards of how the starfish interacts with the rest of the world or how any other system perceives it. If you see something colored red, you will know that you saw red and that is 'true', and that it will be false that you didn't see 'red', assuming you recognize 'red' the same as everyone else and that your nervous system isn't wired too strangely or if your sensory systems aren't defective or function differently than average. Consequences of mathematical truths will be everywhere, regardless if you understand them or not. A circle's length will depend on its radius regardless if you understand the relation or not. Any system, be they human, computer or alien, regardless of the laws of physics in play should also be able to compute (Church-Turing Thesis shows that computation comes very cheap and all it takes is ability of some simple abstract finite rules being followed and always yielding the same result, although specific proofs for showing Turing-universality would depend on each system - some may be too simple to have such a property, but then, it's questionable if they would be powerful enough to support intelligence or even more trivial behavior such as life/replicators or evolution), and if they can, they will always get the same results if they asked the same computational or mathematical question (in this case, mathematical truths, or even yet unknown truths such as Riemann hypothesis, Goldbach conjecture, and so on). Most physics should support computation, and I conjecture that any physics that isn't strong enough to at least support computation isn't strong enough to support intelligence or consciousness (and computation comes very cheap!). Support computation and you get any mathematical truth that humans can reach/talk about. Don't support it, and you probably won't have any intelligence in it. To put it more simply: if Church Turing Thesis(CTT) is correct, mathematics is the same for any system or being you can imagine. If it's wrong, maybe stuff like concrete infinities, hypercomputation and infinite minds could exist and that would falsify COMP, however there is zero evidence for any
Re: An analogy for Qualia
On Jan 9, 12:56 am, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 3:36 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But naturalism want to explain things by reducing it to nature or natural law, If you want to explain X you say that X exists because of Y. It's true that Y can be nothing and thus the existence of X is random, but let's assume that Y is something;in that case if you don't want to call Y natural law what do you want to call it? Computationalism asks for an explanation for the natural laws, And if found those explanations would be yet more natural laws; however we don't know that there is a explanation for everything, some things might be fundamental. I have a hunch that consciousness is fundamental and it's just the way data feels like when it's being processed; If that were the case than having multiple senses would be redundant. What we find instead is that plugging data from a piano note into a visual graphic does not yield any sensory parity. A deaf person cannot understand sound this way. If you turn it around so that feeling is fundamental and data is just the idea our cortex has when it is analyzing experiences, then it makes sense that there would be arithmetic patterns common to many experiences that the cortex can consider - and that those patterns could be used effectively to control phenomena on other frames (so long as we have physical devices to control them). the trouble is that even if consciousness is fundamental a proof of that fact probably does not exist, That's not a problem if it's fundamental. The problem is presuming that a sense of 'proof' is fundamental. so people will continue to invent consciousness theories trying to explain it till the end of time but none of those theories will be worth a bucket of warm spit. I think consciousness is easy to explain if you stop looking so hard and forcing it into a box. It's telling us what it is every day. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: How does comp explain the uncanny valley?
For Stephen and anyone else interested, I asked the following to Steve Grand regarding the capacity of his Grandroids to do self-modeling: Quick question (and forgive me if this has already come up) - do you think the grandroids will have the capacity for self-modeling? If so, is there something in the way you will design the brains (as such, from the bottom up) that will somehow encourage self-modeling? I'm working on the assumption that that is something you wouldn't be designing in explicitly, but I also know that you are realistic about tradeoffs involved between design and emergence. And his response: They'll certainly (all being well!) develop a model of their own body and how it works. How far that will extend, though, is a tricky question. Basically the system learns by observation of itself. At first it observes how its senses tend to change over time and how initially random motor actions alter the environment and sensation. Later it will observe itself doing simple motor responses to things and develop higher level understandiing of the sensation-action-sensation loop. Whether in principle it could go on to observe its own thoughts and reflect on them in a more cognitive way I don't know. Right now I'll be impressed when it just manages to learn how to look in a chosen direction, but I think the principle extends quite a long way, even if the practice can't keep up with it! Terren terren wrote: As far as I understand it, if grandroids are capable of self-modeling, it would not be programmed in beforehand but rather emerge somehow. But I'm not sure, I'll ask. On Jan 1, 2012 2:30 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Hi, Does Steve Grand's game include self-modeling? Onward! Stephen On 1/1/2012 10:32 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Jan 1, 8:29 am, Terren Suydamterren.suy...@gmail.com** wrote: Steve Grand's latest project, an artificial-life game called Grandroids, does just that. The bottom layer (substitution level) is an artificial chemistry and biology, including analogues to dna, metabolism, cells (including neurons of course), hormones, and so on. He's concentrating on building a very robust and dynamic set of base components that will be assembled from the dna in ways that result in an artificial animal... an animal that has no behaviors programmed in by Steve or anyone else. Whatever it does will be completely emergent. He's still building it, so a lot of stuff has to be proved out, but if all goes right, these animals will display coherent, apparently goal-directed behaviors in such a way that the most parsimonious explanation of what's happening is that a new layer of psychology has emerged from the computational substrate. Even if Steve fails, it is at least possible in principle to see how that could happen. Happy new year! If Steve fails, it will also be possible to see how that principle falls short in reality and bring functionalism to it's inevitable dead end. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@ **googlegroups.com everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/How-does-comp-explain-the-uncanny-valley--tp33054470p33107788.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: How does comp explain the uncanny valley?
Thanks Terren! Good stuff! Onward! Stephen On 1/9/2012 2:40 PM, terren wrote: For Stephen and anyone else interested, I asked the following to Steve Grand regarding the capacity of his Grandroids to do self-modeling: Quick question (and forgive me if this has already come up) - do you think the grandroids will have the capacity for self-modeling? If so, is there something in the way you will design the brains (as such, from the bottom up) that will somehow encourage self-modeling? I'm working on the assumption that that is something you wouldn't be designing in explicitly, but I also know that you are realistic about tradeoffs involved between design and emergence. And his response: They'll certainly (all being well!) develop a model of their own body and how it works. How far that will extend, though, is a tricky question. Basically the system learns by observation of itself. At first it observes how its senses tend to change over time and how initially random motor actions alter the environment and sensation. Later it will observe itself doing simple motor responses to things and develop higher level understandiing of the sensation-action-sensation loop. Whether in principle it could go on to observe its own thoughts and reflect on them in a more cognitive way I don't know. Right now I'll be impressed when it just manages to learn how to look in a chosen direction, but I think the principle extends quite a long way, even if the practice can't keep up with it! Terren terren wrote: As far as I understand it, if grandroids are capable of self-modeling, it would not be programmed in beforehand but rather emerge somehow. But I'm not sure, I'll ask. On Jan 1, 2012 2:30 PM, Stephen P. Kingstephe...@charter.net wrote: Hi, Does Steve Grand's game include self-modeling? Onward! Stephen On 1/1/2012 10:32 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Jan 1, 8:29 am, Terren Suydamterren.suy...@gmail.com** wrote: Steve Grand's latest project, an artificial-life game called Grandroids, does just that. The bottom layer (substitution level) is an artificial chemistry and biology, including analogues to dna, metabolism, cells (including neurons of course), hormones, and so on. He's concentrating on building a very robust and dynamic set of base components that will be assembled from the dna in ways that result in an artificial animal... an animal that has no behaviors programmed in by Steve or anyone else. Whatever it does will be completely emergent. He's still building it, so a lot of stuff has to be proved out, but if all goes right, these animals will display coherent, apparently goal-directed behaviors in such a way that the most parsimonious explanation of what's happening is that a new layer of psychology has emerged from the computational substrate. Even if Steve fails, it is at least possible in principle to see how that could happen. Happy new year! If Steve fails, it will also be possible to see how that principle falls short in reality and bring functionalism to it's inevitable dead end. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: An analogy for Qualia
Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: No free will = no hunger. No need for it. No mechanism for it. No logic to it. Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII sequence free will means. That was my point. Knowing how to eat does not require logic or induction. But your question was Is it induction that provides our understanding of how to swallow?, you asked about understanding; for prediction induction alone is enough but for understanding you need logic, and for some things neither is required. A rock can stay on the ground even though it's not very good at induction and nobody has a deep understanding of gravity yet. The genetic code in DNA could not be more digital, and it was good enough to build your brain and every other part of you out of simple amino acid molecules; if you look at the details of the assembly process biology uses to make complex things, like your brain, you find its amazingly computer-like. That may not be true even for DNA: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110525/full/473432a.html http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6038/53 DNA translates its information into RNA and RNA tells the ribosomes what linear sequence of amino acid molecules to make, after the ribosomes are finished the linear sequence folds up into very complex shapes forming proteins, and that makes you including your brain. This controversial experiment (as I said no experiment is finished until it is repeated) says that there is a unknown mechanism that sometimes makes minor changes in the DNA to RNA part of that chain. In no place in that paper is it suggested that the unknown mechanism (assuming it even exists) is analog and for a very good reason, indeed it is very clear that there is no way it could be analog. Think of your father and grandfather and great grandfather and all the millions of individuals in the past that led up to you; every one of those individuals got old and died but their genetic legacy remains as vital as is was the day they were born thousand or millions of years ago, and there is absolutely no way that could happen if the information was encoded in a analog manner. Do you remember the old analog cassette tapes, if you made a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a music tape pretty soon the resulting tape had so many errors in it that it could no longer be called music and was unlistenable; that was because with analog copying the errors are cumulative, but that is not the case with digital copying. If the internet was based on analog technology the big music companies would have had no problem with bootleg copies of their product, but it uses digital methods so they had a very big problem indeed. The primary sequence of DNA is just part of the story though. Secondary and tertiary epigenetic factors are can determine which genes are used and which are not, and they are not digital. Of course they're digital!! Cytosine and guanine are 2 of the 4 bases in DNA and it is the variation in the sequence of these 4 bases that carry the genetic code. The epigenetic factors you're talking about happens because sometimes at the point where cytosine and guanine meet a molecule called a methyl group is sometimes attached. A methyl group is a very small molecule consisting of just one carbon atom connected to three hydrogen atoms, and the existence of a methyl group changes the way the sequence of bases in DNA is translated into a sequence of amino acids in a protein. But the methyl group is either at the cytosine-guanine point or it is not, the code is still purely digital as indeed it HAD to be. Synapses don't fire, neurons fire across synapses That distinction escapes me. Just because traffic lights turn from red to green before drivers move their cars forward doesn't mean that the traffic light is what is making cars move from one place to another. Huh? Traffic lights are a very important reason that cars move from point X to point Y in the way they do. An anecdotal account of being hit by a bus is not the same thing as the experience of it. True, but that anecdotal account is the best you can do unless you're ready to step out in front of a bus yourself. But digital flowers don't smell like anything or feel like anything or grow in the ground with water. That's because flowers are nouns but you're not really interested in nouns. Digital arithmetic in a computer does seem to be the same as the arithmetic you do in your head, except that the stuff in your head is much slower and much more prone to error. Surprise is relative. What a programmer might find surprising might seem inevitable to someone who has spent more time studying the program's implication. Baloney. There is not a person on this planet who knows what will happen if you program a computer to find the first even number greater than 2 that is not the sum of two prime numbers and then stop. And it only took me 18 words to describe that problem, there are a infinite number of similar
