Friendly Humour posted:

Neural systems do not process information using logic gates

blowfish posted:

[citation needed]

Juffo-Wup posted:

That is not an assumption made by any contemporary computationalist.

In general, any time you think you can invalidate an entire field of academic study with a single sentence, you should stop for a second and wonder 'why hasn't anyone else thought of this?'

Friendly Humour posted:

If it doesn't use logic gates, it's not a computer nor does it do computation.

Juffo-Wup posted:

Computational Theory of Mind at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy


Would you be at all worried if this declaration didn't match up to common usage?

Alternatively, if mental features were syntactically individuated and had a compositional semantics, would you be inclined to count that as 'using logic gates?'

Friendly Humour posted:

A Computer can be reduced to a turing machine, a neural intelligence cannot.

Dzhay posted:

I would really like to see you back this statement up. I would like it a lot.

Friendly Humour posted:

Me too! I would like to see a neural intelligence that can be reduced to a turing machine!

Dzhay posted:

That's easy, they've made basic logic gates out of rat neurones.

waitwhatno posted:

Transition state theory is probably one of the most important concepts required to understand self-assembly in biology. You are just talking nonsense here.

I don't see how the model you proposed adds anything interesting to the physical understanding of life, so yeah, I'm brushing it off.

Friendly Humour posted:

Me too! I would like to see a neural intelligence that can be reduced to a turing machine!

minasole posted:

Touring machine requires a creator....

McDowell posted:

We're Von Neumann probes, not Turing test robots.

Dzhay posted:

Just so we're clear, are you actually arguing that

a) A normal (separate CPU, RAM etc.) computer's architecture is a piss-poor model of an animal brain

or

b) Said brain couldn't be emulated by that sort of computer, with at most a polynomial slow-down?

Because if it's (a), I agree with you whole-heartedly, but you're using the wrong words.

On the other hand, if you meant (b) - give me one reason to think that might be the case.

Friendly Humour posted:

Not the point, as I said I can do math in my head (very poorly) and computers can simulate neural intelligence through VNN. Both neural intelligence and computation can simulate either, but the whole point is that it needs to be simulated, and that simulation is inefficient compared to their native states. They are categorically different ways of processing information, they rely on different principles, hence the very need for simulation. Computeres use hardcoded laws to process distinct inputs, neural intelligence seeks associations in sequences of signals that do not need to be distinct (just need to carry a sequence). Analog versus digital, so to say.

Juffo-Wup posted:

Again, you are arguing against a strawman. Nobody in contemporary cognitive science uses 'computational' the way you are using it. What you are saying is not relevant to any contemporary debate in the field. You literally do not know the first thing about the subject. Your apparent confidence despite these facts is just baffling.

waitwhatno posted:

minasole posted:

I don't think that self-assembly emerges spontaneously, or can exist in isolation.

The Belgian posted:

waitwhatno, did you have time to look into the Kac ring text yet? Do you understand now why a system does not move thorugh the entire state space in relevant times? It's really a rather important point if you want to get nonequilibrium stat mech. I'd be happy to answer questions if part of it's unclear.

quote:

All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

waitwhatno posted:

No, I didn't, although I'm still planning to look over it.

It simply has nothing to with what I was arguing. As I already said, I completely agree with you on how difficult it can be to explain many biochemical processes happening in a reasonable time frames. But concerning abiogenesis, it's way too early for serious discussions about time frames, since there is no universally accepted explanation for how abiogenesis happened and how exactly the more complex organisms developed. No one has any idea what time frames were involved or the population size of the very first organisms. Neither are the exact mechanism/circumstances known that allowed for the highly improbable parts of abiogenesis to occur.

I'm just gonna leave you with the wise word of the famous honey rights advocate Richard Dawkins

Shbobdb posted:

It's a good thing that the Earth isn't a closed system and it has a huge amount of energy constantly being pumped into it by the Sun.

The entropy argument only works if you don't actually understand how thermodynamics works.

The Belgian posted:

I wasn't really arguing against the final points you were making. The problem I had with you post was that you used entropy as an explanation when rather entropy is (at first sight) rather something that opposed what you were arguing for and it should by explained how life forms and so on despite entropy. Trying to explain abiogenesis is a very important task and I agree that very little is known about it (Although it's certainly not a research domain I'm actively following).

waitwhatno posted:

Look, this discussion is really going nowhere. I think I tried to make my point often enough, with enough examples and analogies for a lifetime. If you are interested in that topic, I can only recommend a book on Darwin, the travels on the Beagle and the following years. He describes and explains the branching of species very nicely and more people should read about him anyway, he was a great man.

Shbobdb posted:

Life is a sustained disequilibrium, powered by the Sun.

In terms of abiogenesis, last I checked the reducing atmosphere made the formation of larger (proto?)biomolecules energetically favorable, including autocatalytic molecules.

Once you've got that, basic selective pressure takes over.

Hard to prove since it wouldn't leave much of a geological record (especially once free oxygen comes into play) but all the basic biochemistry is there.

Shbobdb posted:

Oh. OK then. What's that got to do with the price of bread?

Shbobdb posted:

Oh. OK then. What's that got to do with the price of bread?

waitwhatno posted:

naah, i'm just smug on principle, at all times.

ok lets try this, lets do some drunk napkin philosophin':

once you have a population of self-replicating and mutating chemical systems that can change into a huge amount of possible configuration states, entropy dictates that all of the possible states will be populated over time, right? now, some of these possible states are configurations that are capable of perception-action and once some of these states are populated, they will act as transition states and open up the new and enormous state-space of modern complex life. this state-space is much, much larger than the one of primitive, simple life.

i think that there is nothing special about the first perception-action capable state. once you have all the prerequisites in place, this type of state will be populated sooner or later and from then on, state entropy will lead to complex lifeforms completely displacing all non-complex life.

the best analogy that i can think of right now is a polypeptide. polypeptides can fold into an enormous amount of possible configurations, with some of these configurations acting as transition states to important functional enzymes. now, if you leave an infinite amount of these peptides out, these transition states will be populated sooner or later and lead to the formation of functional enzymes. imagine that this functional enzyme was our commons ancestor and the transitional state was the very first perception-action capable state.

The Belgian posted:

I was objecting to the notion that things go through their entire state space.

McDowell posted:

Protein folding is all about state space so life seems to have already found a (the?) 'niche'.