Sin 2 :)

[obscurus]

We may look pretty much the same in the far future. Some animals have remained the same for hundreds of millions of years. We'll carry on mentally evolving, but there's no reasion why we'd need to keep physically evolving that much.

I think humans from a million years ago were as clever as we are today, they just hadn't gathered as much knowledge, and humans a million years from now will not be smarter than us, they'll just have a lot more knowledge.

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We might look similar in 100 My, but it is quite likely we will not. Physical and Mental evolution are not separate processes for one, and there are a large number of processes that will keep changing our decendants with each generation. If, for example, humans colonise numerous planets in the galaxy, various evolutionary processes will cause human populations on these separate worlds to diverge, until they become quite distinct species. And even on our own planet, the processes of sexual selection, social selection and genetic drift will keep changing us even in the absence of any other selection pressures. Animals that have remained much the same for hundreds of millions of years have only done so because of very strong natural selection to remain the same, or because they are fortunate enough to have been in an isolated ecosystem that has not changed much. Neither of those scenarios are likely to apply to humans, and the wide range of human genetic variation (and hence phenotypic variation) is more than enough to keep us evolving along quite unpredictable paths.

 

In terms of what an individual human from a million years ago knows, and what a modern human individual knows, the quantity of knowledge will not be much different - the human brain has a limited capacity for knowledge and memory, and a human from a million years ago will have a vast amount of knowledge relevant to his or her lifestlye, just different knowledge to what a modern human has. You could most likely raise a Homo erectus or Homo habilis child and integrate them into modern human society without too much difficulty (assuming of course that they weren't extinct!).

 

And that all depends on which species of human you are talking about: 1 million years ago there were several species of human, and as recently as 40,000 years ago there were at least two species, and anatomically modern humans are only about 100,000 years old.

 

And despite many popular misconceptions, there is very little correlation between brain size and cognitive function (see one of my earlier posts for some of the resons for this). A typical African Grey Parrot with a fairly small brain has the same level of cognitive ability as a typical six year old human child who has a brain that is as big as the whole parrot, and it is not clear what whales do with their enormous brains - brain size is not a good predictor of intelligence or cognitive ability (nor is the ratio of brain size to body size, or brain structure complexity).

[Maximius]

Obscurus, is it correct that number of folds in a brain is a clue to the level of intelligence? Crenellation (sp) I think? Allows for greater area with less demands on total volume.

 

This speciation of humans is interesting talk. As an aside, are you familiar with the Basque peoples of Spain? I recently read that its thought they may be a strain of humanity with the last known expressions of Neaderthal genes. They share a number of characteristics, heavy earlobes, large brows, and an unusually high occurence of top 20% I.Q.s. I cannot remember where I saw this, it was a reputable source. I hope its not some horrid slander.

 

Homo sapiens, possibly the dumb fucks of the human family? And you know what I mean..

 

Another possible branching off of the human species could be our machine progeny. They would be far more likely candidates for interstellar travel than our current forms. Although for short term we need to get off this rock and get started on the Moon or Mars. I believe they discovered a lake of frozen water underneath the N pole of the Moon, cometary water or something like that. Its an enormous advantage for us as fuel and for life support, especially since its already there.

 

I reread some of the past posts and want to add a point to the points about the Point of It All. Truly there is no point to life, I believe this sincerely, in its most basic conception its merely a set of chemical reactions that cannot stop unless an asteroid or something similar nips it. But who cares? To hell with points. Its the ultimate freedom in fact, if we can seize it as a species/being, we can make our own point(s).

Edited August 5, 2005 by Maximius

[obscurus]

Maximius, there is some controversy over the relevance of the sulci and gyri (the ridges and furrows on the surface of the brain - crenellation refers to a type of battlement on castles, though the pattern I think is similar) amongst biologists . A lot of people have a very anthropocentric view of things, and try to make reality fit their preconceptions. The prevailing view at the moment is that the total surface area of the brain has something to do with intelligence, but this view has some problems for the anthropocentists, as the platypus has the most convoluted brain of all, and the most surface area relative to body size. It appears this has something to do with the way it senses the electric fields of it's prey, but the platypus has not demonstrated profoundly superior cognitive abilities to humans. Cetaceans (whales) have much higher brain surface area and more complex patterns of sulci and gyri in general than humans, as do quite a few other animals. Some of the anthropocentrist crowd have speculated that the thickness of the outer surface of the brain may have something to do with it, but again, there is no consistent pattern to really give this hypothesis any credence in my view, and the evidence this is based on is very shaky.

 

The reason so many ideas about the size and function of the brain has stemmed from a basic assumption people have made:

 

Assumption: humans are the most intelligent animal.

Hypothesis1: if humans are the most intelligent animal, and the brain is the organ of intelligence, and humans have big brains, therefore the size of the brain is directly proportional to intelligence.

 

When it was pointed out that there are plenty of animals with bigger brains than humans, Hypothesis 2 was put forward: Sure there are animals with bigger brains than humans, but they have smaller brains relative to their body size.

 

When it was pointed out that there are quite a few animals that have relatively larger brains than humans, a whole raft of hypotheses were thrown into the mix, including the one about the complexity of the sulci and gyri, or the thickness of the outer surface of the brain.

 

The problem may well be the basic assumption - that humans are the most intelligent animal. Intelligence is a very hard thing to define, and encompases a whole range of cognitivre functions, and are very difficult to measure objectively. Having a large brain is a big metabolic cost, so animals are not going to tote around an organ that consumes a huge amount of energy unless it is very beneficial and does something important - if an animal can slot into an ecological niche without needing an expensive, oversised brain, it will. Personally, I doubt humans are the smartest animal around - our main cognitive strengths are communication and memory, and they are not unique to humans by any means. I also doubt that brain size per se is that relevant. It could be that mammals need much larger brains than birds because bird brains are more efficient. Birds are certainly a lot smarter than you would think if raw size had anything to do with it.

 

As for the Basque people being the descendants of Neanderthals, sorry that is a myth.

Genetic analysis has shown that Neanderthal man was a separate species to modern humans, and there is no evidence of any interbreeding between the two. Homo neanderthalensis was a species of human that specialised in living in very cold climates, and seems to have died out as the climate warmed and the more genrealised Homo sapiens moved in on their territory.

 

When people ask the question "What is the meaning of life?" or "what is the point of it all?" my response is that it is an invalid question, like asking "what is 1 divided by 0?" Meaning is an intrinsically human concept, and does not apply to the universe.

 

If you want a point, you will have to make one for yourself...

[oDDity]

No, there is no point. Life and death are both things that happen to you without your consent, and that is what religion is all about, trying to manufacture a meaning for it in the absense of one.

[sparhawk]

I like to compare computers with brains. Mainly because their objectives are pretty much the same. They are data processing machines, but maybe such a concept is to simplicistic. Anyway, I strongly believe that computers can get consciousness if their complexity and processing powers will break through a certain point. I simply believe this, because I think that our own consciousness is the result of the complexity of our brain.

Now when I look at computers, the size is clearly irrelevant. In fact it is quite the opposite, because older computers were much worse then nowadays pockect caclulators but had the size of a house. It would also not work the other way around because small computers are not neccessarily smarter than bigger computers. So what it boils down to, is the internal complexity. A CPU inside a washing machine is much less complex then a modern PC CPU, simply because it doesn't require this kind of complexity. And even if you put a 64 Bit CPU into a washing machine, it will still not be smarter than even a Windows PC is (in terms of flexibillity). So in the end, what it boils down to, it's the software that operates the hardware. A slow big copmputer can still be more efficient, if properly programmed, then a modern 64Bit CPU which just runs an endless loop that plays a simple song.

Personally I also don't really believe that we will not reall inhabit the universe. I also rather think that we will build machines, which will do this for us. We might survive this as a concept (which Dawkins coined the term meme for in an analogy to gene). So these machines could have our knowledge and way of thinking incorporated, and may even think of themself as the next generation human because they may run a similar software.

[Maximius]

Thanks for clearing that up obscurus, I wish I could remember where I saw that piece. And your points about human intelligence being a kind of self fulfilling prophecy dovetail with a lot of simple observations Ive made about people in general. Its been my experience that people believe what they want, despite even strong evidence to the contrary.

 

You can argue with them, presenting strong points to counter their positions, and **they may even agree with the points you are making**, but continue to cling to their misperceptions, even when faced with a preponderance of evidence. Beliefs for critical thinkers are dynamic things, to be stressed, twisted, examined, and possibly cast aside. Beliefs for the vast majority of individuals are closely held treasures, to be defended at all costs. The perception seems to be that if somone can change your beliefs, they have somehow wrestled control away from you.

 

Of course, the ability to shed obsolete beliefs is the penultimate degree of control for a thinking being. Ossified thinking is a terrible disadvantage, even in everyday mundane situations. It makes one susceptible to the chicanery of those who see your rigidity and opt to play off of it to their own advantage.

 

An example could be the good folks of the American Heartland, who voted for a gang they thought represented the Christian right and good. They were played like fiddles, they sacrificed their short and long term real life interests for a grab bag of religious hocus pocus and jingoism. True, these people were out and out lied to, but that doesnt account for the degree of support they threw behind the criminals currently in power. Uncritically, they threw themselves at the feet to the false idol of the American Democracy, where every powerless screwball gets a vote, a gilded paperweight souvenir of the 10 commandments, a bag of honey roasted peanuts and thinks themselves the captains of their destiny. Woe unto the Children of Idaho!

 

They ignored the past crimes of the political Right against themselves under Ronald Ray-Gun, they ignored the screaming evidence of stolen elections and voter intimidation, and instead concentrated on defeating their perceived enemies, the scumbag Democrats, the Slightly Left of Right party. They saved unborn babies and sent their living children to die in Iraq. They hooted and yammered about evolution in their schools while funding for those public institutions dried up. They cheered invasions of their privacy and the dissolution of their meagre personal rights in response to terrorism while public health infrastructure disintegrates, putting the population at a vastly increased risk of a pandemic.

 

I had read an interesting piece somewhere sparhawk about comparisons of human brains to computers, while its an interesting and useful comparison its good to remember that humans always end up describing their intelligence in terms of the current cultural/technological realities. Earlier comparisons included the mind as laboratory, the mind as alchemists alembic, the mind as golem, the mind as library. Such models have to be taken with grains of salt, but simultaneously such models must be taken into account.

 

That being said, I would not die of surprise if it is correct that the differences between human and possible machine intelligence are bascially matters of degree, not some fundamental inherent difference. Daniel Dennett has written in "freedom evolves" about how even slight differences in design can yield vast differences in results, another way of saying it is that small quantitative changes in a particular group of intelligent functions can yield a big difference in the qualities of those functions. (thats grossly simplified but YGTP.)

Edited August 5, 2005 by Maximius

[sparhawk]

Well said. I see you read Denett? I have read "Consciousness Explained" from him (in english, because at that time I haven't found a translation) and I had to start reading this books three times, until I managed to go through with it. I must say that this was really excellently written, and at least tries to put a logical and evolutionary basis behind consciousness. I also read "The emperors clothes" by Roger Penrose, which seems to be also well regarded, but I could never follow it. Maybe it is because I don't understand the physics involved, but somehow it felt quite arbitrary and forced to me. As if somebody tries to impress the reader whit many formulas until he will agree to anything said because he has to bow to the superior knowledge of the author. Denett seems to stay much more on the clear side and manages to express his ideas in such a way that I could think them to possible without much hocuspocus. This would also fit into what you said about explanations matching current technology level, because theories that say quantum mechanics is responsible for consiousness is, in my book, in the same legaue as saying consciousness is something exclusively granted by god or some other unproofable mechanism. That's why I think the comparison with computers much more interesting, because I don't think that they fit in the same category as the golem or other stuff you mentioned. After all, a computer is a thinking machine, designed to make decision based on data processing. Therefore I have the feeling that drawing an analogy with it, is much more allowed than analogies with some superstitions.

[Maximius]

Yes Ive worked quite a bit with Dennett, I wrote a paper using his excellent book "Elbow Room" which I cannot recommend enough. He handily explains his ideas in straightforward language and provides great examples to back up his points, a real pleasure to read. Ive disagreed with what I have seen as some of his more "political" statements, in terms of freedom within society and such, but he has been formative of much of my views on free will.

 

Never messed with Penrose, but a good book to read on Einstein and his predecessors is E=Mc2 A History of an Equation, again straightforward and a good history too. Ive got Hawkings latest on the list too, the one where he explains the 24 + dimensions and micro-universes. It helps to have the color cartoon illustrations I assure you.

 

Im unfamiliar with theories of consciouness that base themselves in q-mechanics but I have heard it used as an explanation by incompatiblist libertarians to help explain how a person could "do other than what she has willed to do", the ancient inc. libertarian battle-cry. Simply put, q-activity allows to step outside our determining influences for a microsecond to do "otherwise." Its poppycock to me, why this is freedom producing or why it should be considered as being outside of ourselves Ive never understood.

 

I agree the computer analogy is important and compelling, more so than other models. We surely are information collecting beings, the primary differences SEEM to be how we record, access, process, our information, as you pointed out. I just like to keep it in the back of my mind that it is only a model after all.

Edited August 6, 2005 by Maximius

[obscurus]

If you asume that one neurone in the human brain holds one byte of information, you apparently wind up with the human brain having about 4 gigabytes of storage, a figure that seems couterintively small. Of course, the basic assumption could be wrong. Using the computer analogy is only useful up to a point when describing the brain, because the brain works in a totally different way to a computer - it is not how many neurones (= transistors, sort of) you have, it is how they are wired together that counts. You can apparently mimic the behaviour of insects using as few as 12 transistors wired as a neural network, which would suggests that if the transistors in a P4 could be wired adaptively and dynamically, you could mimic the behaviour of a much more cognitively complex organism. Mammals have bigger brains in general than birds of the same size, yet birds are generally smarter (by all the cognitive tests that can be applied, which aren't many) than equivalently sized mammals in similar ecological niches. It suggests to me that the fundamental architecture of the avian brain is more efficiently wired than the mammalian brain. Just a hypothesis.

 

I find Penrose's wrting to be a bit abstruse (I was never that good at maths, and I get a headache after a few pages of wrapping my brain around quantum mechanics), and while his hypothesis that the microtubules in living cells somehow function as a sort of quantum computer is not completely implausible, his attempts to connect that to an explanation of consciousness is fairly weak in my view. I think consciousness is such an idiosyncratic thing that explaining it is fairly precarious - Dennet has some very good ideas on the subject, though, and he writes very well.

[Maximius]

obscurus, I understand that birds are directly related to dinosaurs. Could it be that the avian brain structure has had time to develop more streamlined processes than most of the mammals?

[obscurus]

Birds are the only surviving members of the dinosaur family tree (there are some paleontologists who dispute this, but they are in a small minority, and the weight of evidence to suggest that birds are dinosaurs is overwhelming in the view of most biologists and pleontologists). More specifically, they are a branch of the Theropods, which we now have good reason to think were all warm blooded, feathered (those raptors in Jurassic Park should have had emu-like feathers). Theropods had many features to suggest they were fairly intelligent - they had quite large brains for dinosaurs, they often had grasping hands with opposable thumbs, and there were some that appeared to be nocturnal.

 

Mammals and birds diverged very early on from their reptillian ancestors, so there was plenty of time to evolve more complex, adaptive brains independently. So the fundamental neural architecture of the avian brain is quite different to that of mammals.

 

Often in evolution, an organism will end up with a feature that is far from optimal, but beacuase it is the result of the acumulation of millions of mutations, evolving a different, more optimal feature would require so many mutations to occur, many of which would have no adaptive advantage, that they are effectively stuck with the genes their ancestors left them with.

 

So mammals might have evolved more intelligent brains by enlarging the surface area and complexity of the brain, and this architecture became so entrenched that no amount of selection pressure or time could change that fundamental architecture. It would sort of be like trying to replace the foundations of a skyscraper without the building falling down. Whereas birds seem to have inherited a much more efficient way of organising their neural networks. Birds also had very strong selection to keep their brains both small and smart - flight imposes a weight restriction, but it also requires a pretty sophisticated nervous system to keep the bird aloft, and carry out all the complex social and behavioural tasks birds engage in.

 

And don't forget the Octopus - their brains are radically different to vertebrate brains (they have a brain that wraps around their oesophagus like a doughnut, and their nerve cells are much bigger and thicker than vertebrate nerve cells), and they are solitary animals that live for no more than a year or two, yet they are highly intelligent problem solvers. Cuttlefish (a cephalopod mollusc like the octopus) have very complex social behaviour and communication, and are at least as intelligent as dogs (you can even train them to play games with you like a dog), yet they have a very simple brain in comparison.

 

Making assumptions about things based on preconceptions you have is very silly, and a good scientist will abandon all their preconceptions, and will only make assumptions if they can formally describe their assumption using logic and reason. Good scientists always leave room for uncertainty, and that is the fundamental difference between science and religion - religion conjures certainty out of nowhere, science makes old truisms and beliefs uncertain.

[Maximius]

I once spoke with an aquarium store owner about buying an octopus. He did not recommend it for two reasons, one they died in a year or two, the other was they were too fucking smart and would always escape. He told me how he would drop a cockroach into his octos tank and watch the fun. The octo would grab the roach, now drowned, and set it in front of its lair. Then the guy would put a feeder crab into the water. The crab would smell the roach, move towards it, and Zap! out comes the octo for lunch.

 

I read somewhere that one theory about the origins of human intelligence placed a lot of emphasis on the role of binocular vision. Simply, when our ancestors began to develop binocular vision, the processing power of our brains began to increase as well to handle the additional load. The unintended but beneficial increase in memory, decision making, whatever had its own benefits in terms of selection and was retained.

[obscurus]

Ah yes stories of octopus smarts are legend... they have a reputation as escape artists as well. There are numerous stories of pet octopi escaping their tank, crawling into kitchens, opening containers of food and eating the contents, then returning to their tank, leaving only a trail of water...

 

I think the importance of binocular vision regarding the development of intelligence might be overstated a little... Binocular vision is an adaptation that allows animals to judge distances accurately. This can be useful if you spend your life climbing trees, as our ancestors did, or if you are a predator, such as a cat or an owl, or we are as modern humans. Being able to judge distance accurately lets you swoop down on a mouse if you are an owl, or catch antelope if you are a leopard, or in our case, throw a spear into a kangaroo for example, or jump from one branch to another without missing the branch and falling to the ground. Our tree climbing primate ancestry left us with an important adaption that allowed us to become a highly generalised predatory omnivore, but I think our brainyness is more a requirement of being an uber generalist - being a jack-of-all-trades means you need a lot more cognitive flexibility than an obligate carnivore like a lion, or a specialist grazer like a giraffe.

 

Predators in general need to be able to outsmart their prey if they can't rely on speed alone, but the converse is also true - prey animals need to be able to outsmart predators to survive. So prey animals and predators both have a reason to be intelligent, but they will manifest their intelligence according to their positon in the food chain. Sheep for example, are, contrary to popular misconceptions, very intelligent animals. They can recognise each individual in their herd by face, they can distinguish between hundreds of different types of grass, and they are surprisingly good at certain cognitive tasks that can be related back to predator evasion tactics.

 

So are animals with binocular vision smarter than animals without it? Probably not in general, because prey animals and predators have very different cognitive tools at their disposal, and it is sort of like comparing apples and oranges.

 

And in terms of brain processing power, well we have a much larger visual cortex than most animals, because we rely heavily on our sense of vision, but it is still only a small portion of our brain overall. And birds in general have superior vision to humans, but they do it with a far smaller visual cortex, so again, one wonders just why our brains need to be so large, when other animals can clearly get away with less.

 

And interestingly, the new species of dwarf hominid found in Indonesia was essentially a miniaturised Homo erectus, but they showed clear signs of advanced tool use comparable to pleolithic humans, so it would appear humans can get away with less. There is also the case of a mathematics professor (I forget the exact details) who had a brain so small doctors were surprised he was alive at all - his cranium was mostly empty, and you could shine a light through his skull. his brain was one-eighth the size of a normal brain, but he had above normal cognitive function (at least in certain areas).

 

And neanderthal man had a brain that was on average 200ccs bigger than that of modern humans, yet they were much more specialised than we were. Brains are not as well understood as a lot of people would like you to believe.

 

I think the human brain is big largely as a redundancy function - we can sustain extensive brain damage and still recover and function with some degree of normality, but I don't think that is true of many other animals. If you lose an entire hemisphere of your brain, you can still function as a person (as long as you survive, of course!), and the remaining brain gradually rewires to compensate. Whatever the reason we have big brains, it must be important, because our heads are about as big as they can get before we could not give birth safely or walk bipedally. They are risky enough as it is, so they aren't going to get much bigger, either.

[Darkness_Falls]

Yikes. You guys are really writing a lot about all this. I wish I was either a speed reader, or that the transcript of this thread would come out on audio tape

[Maximius]

Im going to have to expand my reading on the topic of consciousness, any suggestions? The vast majority of my readings are based in free will discussions but Id like to get some different perspectives outside of philosophy.

 

If I understand your discussion correctly, you are saying that the advantage of human intelligence is that it is not overly specialized, as a lions is for hunting or a sheeps' is for grazing and living in a herd. We can do a lot of different things pretty well as opposed to doing a few things really well. So comparing intelligences between species is, as you say apples v. oranges, as it would appear each intelligence is hard to comprehend when you dont consider the organism it appears in.

Edited August 11, 2005 by Maximius

[Domarius]

Im going to have to expand my reading on the topic of consciousness, any suggestions?

Maybe obscurus should write a book

[Maximius]

Maybe obscurus should write a book

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Jeez, he did that here already....

[obscurus]

If you get me started on something, I can be hard to shut up...

[FishFace]

Monster topic.

 

Interestingly, no-one brought up this particular point: the scale of organisms. If you think about it, atoms and so on are made of subatomic particles. Molecules made of atoms, proteins made of molecules, cells made of proteins (amongst other things) and organisms made of cells. In the end, all humans are is a bunch of cells - virtually the same cells that make up every other animal, and there's not much to differentiate them from an amoeba. oDD hurls "consciousness" and "abstract thought" around like it's some kind of dividing line, but if that is true, where can you place it? When do we stop being a collection of, essentially, amoeba?

If you posit that amoeba are autonomous, and we are made of nothing much more complex, how is it possible that we are not autonomous, too, just on a much larger scale? I am quite a firm believer that for all our complex behaviour, we are actually governed by simple rules. The thing is, there's a bloody lot of them. Our brain is nothing more than a collection of logic gates. The process goes something like this: light hits photoreceptor cell, triggering a change in the shape of a photopsin protein, firing a neurone. An electrical signal is triggered, which at the end produces a chemical neurotransmitter, that diffuses across the synapse triggering another electrical signal. At this point, more and more signals are combined from the eyes until we have a picture. The signals are sent off to other area and combined with more inputs until something sends a signal to some muscles to do something. You are essentially arguing, for us to have this fuzzy "free will," there is "something else" going on here that grants us it. Okham's razor states that the solution to a problem with the least assumptions is most likely to be correct. I see no difference between the "free will" argument and the "predetermined-or-as-near-as-dammit" but the fact that you assume there is something else going on. Quod erat demonstradum.

 

Again on the subject of scale, but now on the subject of survival of the fittest, it seems to me that a community of animals or plants acts remarkably similar to an organism, but on a larger scale. We become the cells, and our cells become the proteins. Therefore, the act of one person deciding to do something against his own instincts may help the "greater good." A byproduct of a higher organism is that effects take longer to be shown, so this can't be proven, but is still a possibility. Just as genetic information controls the creation of cells in the human body, knowledge controls, at least to an extent, the creation of people (as in, their personalities.) The genes that create people that create suicidals will (very slowly) become more present if suicidals provide a significant benefit. This can be transferred to other procreation denying actions.

 

Just to pick out one particular point, you said we decided to start farming, as if this separated us from the rest. In which case, why are ants and other farming species not as superior as we are in your eyes? It's wrong to assume in any way that we act outside of nature, as if it were possible. This simply assumes that anything man does is unnatural, when man was borne out of nature and nothing else. We are an extension of nature, I don't grasp how anything we do can be considered unnatural anyway.

 

Even if it were possible to prove somehow that we acted outside of nature, it's irrelevant to the species. It does not prove we are superior in any way except arbitrarily. As has been said, species are not really successful in any other capacity than the fact that they exist. The environment is something like an ice tray. We are the water that's poured in. If the water is poured in on the left, we populate the left. If the left bit overflows, then we fill the right up - this like moving out of water onto land - to say we are better is like saying the water on the right is better. Every species fills a niche and is no better or worse for it. If it didn't exist, something else would probably fill it. As has been noted, mammals are a recent invention, and will probably become extinct quite soon (for all our ingenuity, some things are inevitable if we stay here; a mars-sized object hit the earth in its infancy, probably melting the entire surface. I'd like to see anyone survive that.) Something new will come along and fill our place, because there will be a gap in the ice tray to fill, just as we filled it.

[sparhawk]

If you asume that one neurone in the human brain holds one byte of information, you apparently wind up with the human brain having about 4 gigabytes of storage, a figure that seems couterintively small.

 

Of course that would be a very wrong analogy. You can't directly comapre a byte storage system with neurons. Bytes always have exact values, no matter in what state they are, while neurons are non-continous. Also the way neural networks work are quite different from normal dataprocessing as used in computers. NN's work with patterns, not with exact numbers. That's why humans are not really good at memorizing exact data most of the time. It's simply not needed and not built into the system.

 

Of course, the basic assumption could be wrong.  Using the computer analogy is only useful up to a point when describing the brain, because the brain works in a totally different way to a computer - it is not how many neurones (= transistors, sort of) you have, it is how they are wired together that counts.

 

My analogy was not based on this level, because if you base it on bits and bytes it would be as if you would compare the bytes to the cells. This level is way to deep.

 

I find Penrose's wrting to be a bit abstruse

 

Me too. It seemed to me like a forced thesis just to get quantum mechanics into the play. Kind of like esoteric people grab all the new scientific buzzwords and incorporate it into theoir view of world as if this were THE explanation. Currently esoteric favourites is Energy. Everythihng is some kind of energy, which explains exactly nothing but gives them a cozy feeling. And the same seems to be Penroses idea.

 

(I was never that good at maths, and I get a headache after a few pages of wrapping my brain around quantum mechanics), and while his hypothesis that the microtubules in living cells somehow function as a sort of quantum computer is not completely implausible, his attempts to connect that to an explanation of consciousness is fairly weak in my view.

 

Yes. I didn't bother to try and understand the math, because the written explanations were already abstruse engouh.

 

I think consciousness is such an idiosyncratic thing that explaining it is fairly precarious - Dennet has some very good ideas on the subject, though, and he writes very well.

 

And he writes it in a plausible way. Something that I can't find in Penrose.

[Domarius]

Just to pick out one particular point, you said we decided to start farming, as if this separated us from the rest. In which case, why are ants and other farming species not as superior as we are in your eyes?

 

Ant's put us to shame when it comes to agriculture. (I saw an ant documentry once)

[obscurus]

Of course that would be a very wrong analogy. You can't directly comapre a byte storage system with neurons. Bytes always have exact values, no matter in what state they are, while neurons are non-continous. Also the way neural networks work are quite different from normal dataprocessing as used in computers. NN's work with patterns, not with exact numbers. That's why humans are not really good at memorizing exact data most of the time. It's simply not needed and not built into the system.

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Yeah, I think it is a wrong analogy too (maybe I left that a bit open in my post). Interestingly, humans seem to be able to count to about 5 automatically and unconsciously, and this corresponds to exactly five neurones in the brain that act like registers. This ability is found in many animals (the number varies, even between different humans - from as few as three to as many as fifteen, and there are some birds that might be able to register several thousand objects in this way, but this controversial). It is also quite distinct from consciously counting. You can look at about five objects and know there are five objects with out individually counting them (1, 2, 3 etc), but any more than that and you need to use the Human brain's other counting mechanism which uses abstract thought and language to process large numbers. One of the interesting things coming out of neuroscience at the moment is the realisation that individual neurones can have set functions. There is a single neurone in your brain that lights up if you have two of an object in your attention, another that lights up if there are three... Exactly how this works is unclear, but it has been demonstrated that individual neurones have far more processing power than simply on or off, so any kind of analogy to a binary system is of limited use.

 

Human memory is actually very fuzzy - as you say, we aren't good at memorising exact data. We are good at memorizing proceses, and we can use language to create processes in our minds that allow us to memorize things like pin numbers, birthdays etc, that NNs are not really that good at doing otherwise. Lately I've been reading about how unreliable eyewitness accounts are as a form of evidence in criminal trials - people actually have very poor memories - we memorize a few small details in a very general way, and then our brains reconstruct the rest from the limited information we retain. Kinda like a very lossy compression algorithm in effect, you end up with a memory that is highly 'pixelated' to use an analogy, and our brains smooth out the pixels and fill in the blanks using simple rules based on our experiences. What we remember isn't exactly what happened, it is our brain's reconstruction of what happened by joining the dots, and sometimes (often?) our brains join the wrong dots, making a memory that is quite different to what actually happened.

[obscurus]

Just to pick out one particular point, you said we decided to start farming, as if this separated us from the rest. In which case, why are ants and other farming species not as superior as we are in your eyes?

 

Ant's put us to shame when it comes to agriculture. (I saw an ant documentry once)

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Indeed, I think I already mentioned this, but ants have been farming fungus monocultures, herding aphids, having wars with other ant colonies, building air conditioned cities and having almost perfectly ordered societies about 100 million years before primates started banging rocks together to make tools. They are really quite fascinating creatures...

[sparhawk]

Lately I've been reading about how unreliable eyewitness accounts are as a form of evidence in criminal trials - people actually have very poor memories - we memorize a few small details in a very general way, and then our brains reconstruct the rest from the limited information we retain.

 

There was an article in Scientific America a few months ago about that. Also it's interesting to read James Randy for this, because he spends (spent?) his entire life to defraud con artists claiming psychic abilities. A funny thing is, that people with better scientific training are even worse casual observers than normal poeple, because the exact workings of science interferes with it.

[Maximius]

FishFace, please dont think Im trying to dump all over you, but your posts mentioned a number of points at one time that I have been wishing to address here for a while and I have to seize the opportunity.

FishFace: When do we stop being a collection of, essentially, amoeba?

 

When that collection of amoeba begins to think about itself, for one thing. It is good, and important, to remember that the human organism's physical body is built of simple things but it is our minds that make us special. Not better, or the chosen creatures of God, or any of that nonsense, but our intelligence is different from anything else yet found. First and foremost, for its incredible capacity, maybe its better to say its most important ability, abstract thought. Many animals can communicate faster, more efficiently, than we do, but none of them can exchange the complexity and variety of information that we can. Again, this is not better, it may be our death in fact, but it is unique and different.

 

FishFace: If you posit that amoeba are autonomous, and we are made of nothing much more complex, how is it possible that we are not autonomous, too, just on a much larger scale? I am quite a firm believer that for all our complex behaviour, we are actually governed by simple rules.

 

Just because we are composed of these cells does not mean that there is a straight line that can be traced from their level of activity to ours. Again, Dennett points out in Freedom Evolves rather simple designs can give rise to extremely complex behaviours. (Designed by natural processes, not designed by the Old Man in the Sky.) In other words, we are much more than the sum of our parts.

 

And amoebas are hardly autonomous, they may have a degree of autonomy in their processes, like being able to move about, but thats about it. There is no such thing as "autonomy" for any living creature, there are only degrees of autonomy. We have a greater degree of freedom in the world than any other living thing, yet we too are extremely limited in our autonomy. But I do agree with the notion that we are a collection of basically simple rules that give rise to very complex behaviour.

 

FishFace: You are essentially arguing, for us to have this fuzzy "free will," there is "something else" going on here that grants us it. Okham's razor states that the solution to a problem with the least assumptions is most likely to be correct. I see no difference between the "free will" argument and the predetermined-or-as-near-as-dammit" but the fact that you assume there is something else going on. Quod erat demonstradum.

 

Im not sure who was arguing what here so I will simply inject a few points. First off, do not cross determinism with fatalism. To be determined means that whatever path ones will takes, it does so because of prior determining factors. Fatalism means that only one path is available to our wills, despite what determining factors have influenced it. In the real world, there are very few, if any, fatalistic situations.

 

Secondly, our wills are utterly, completely determined. There is no escape, but fear not. For one thing, our wills are determined by a number of things including **our reflective consciousness.** So while our wills are determined by our past, our biology, the gravity of our planet, our socio/political status, our shoe size, our education, one crucial member of those determinants is ourselves. We are conscious, self aware and externally aware at the same time. This reflectivity plays a role in shaping our wills too. This is what makes them our wills. This is our degree of freedom in the world. Surely we are determined, but as reflective beings we are a intrinsic part of that determining process. When one feels as if a decision is pre-determined, remember that it is you that is taking a part in that determination.

Domarius: Ant's put us to shame when it comes to agriculture. (I saw an ant documentry once)

 

Ants do not engage in agriculture. Agriculture is the science of farming, it demands abstract thought. Ants may "farm" in a sense, caring for and harvesting living organisms, but this activity is instinctive not reflective. How do we know? Try getting a farming ant NOT to farm. They cannot, it is part and parcel of their functions to conduct farming-like activities. Philosophers refer to such activities as being "sphexish" after the sphex wasp.

 

The sphex wasp engages in what appears to be rather intelligent and cunning behaviour. A bit of background, the sphex wasp family is known for paralyzing insects, dragging them to its burrow, laying eggs in the paralyzed but living insect, and then sealing the tomb. WHen the eggs hatch, the larvae devour the paralyzed victim as their first meal.

 

Now when the sphex wasp was first studied, it appeared to engage in what some scientists described as abstract thinking. Before the wasp re-enters the lair with its victim, it drops the bug right outside its hole and then goes in to see if anything has moved in since it went hunting. Now this seems like rather intelligent behaviour, being conscious enough of the fact that something could have moved into the lair, but in fact its merely instinctive. When the wasp is certain the lair is empty, it returns to get the bug and bury it. But if you move the bug only a few inches away, does the wasp just grab it and return to the lair? No, it will grab it, drop it in front again, and go through the inspection process all over again. Dozens and dozens of times in a row in fact. THis "carefulness" and "tactical thinking" is in fact the hard wired product of millions of years of selection. Same thing with farming ants.