Loading ...
Sorry, an error occurred while loading the content.

Fw: [evol-psych] News: The Brain is Not Computable

Expand Messages
  • Anna
    So, no longer mind is just a program?? (;- Anna From: Robert Karl Stonjek Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 9:17 PM To: Mind and Brain ; Evolutionary-Psychology
    Message 1 of 1 , Feb 18, 2013
    So, no longer mind is just a program??
    Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 9:17 PM
    Subject: [evol-psych] News: The Brain is Not Computable

    The Brain is Not Computable

    A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweils Singularity isnt going to happen. Instead, humans will assimilate machines.

    Miguel Nicolelis, a top neuroscientist at Duke University, says computers will never replicate the human brain and that the technological Singularity is a bunch of hot air.

    The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it, says Nicolelis, author of several pioneering papers on brain-machine interfaces.


    Among the ideas promoters are futurist Ray Kurzweil, recently hired on at Google as a director of engineering and who has been predicting that not only will machine intelligence exceed our own but that people will be able to download their thoughts and memories into computers (see Ray Kurzweil Plans to Create a Mind at Googleand Have It Serve You).

    Nicolelis calls that idea sheer bunk. Downloads will never happen, Nicolelis said during remarks made at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Sunday. There are a lot of people selling the idea that you can mimic the brain with a computer.

    The debate over whether the brain is a kind of computer has been running for decades. Many scientists think its possible, in theory, for a computer to equal the brain given sufficient computer power and an understanding of how the brain works.

    Kurzweil delves into the idea of reverse-engineering the brain in his latest book, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, in which he says even though the brain may be immensely complex, the fact that it contains many billions of cells and trillions of connections does not necessarily make its primary method complex.

    But Nicolelis is in a camp that thinks that human consciousness (and if you believe in it, the soul) simply cant be replicated in silicon. Thats because its most important features are the result of unpredictable, non-linear interactions amongst billions of cells, Nicolelis says.

    You cant predict whether the stock market will go up or down because you cant compute it, he says. You could have all the computer chips ever in the world and you wont create a consciousness.

    The neuroscientist, originally from Brazil, instead thinks that humans will increasingly subsume machines (an idea, incidentally, thats also part of Kurzweils predictions).

    In a study published last week, for instance, Nicolelis group at Duke used brain implants to allow mice to sense infrared light, something mammals cant normally perceive. They did it by wiring a head-mounted infrared sensor to electrodes implanted into a part of the brain called the somatosensory cortex.


    Thats important because the human brain has evolved to take the external worldour surroundings and the tools we useand create representations of them in our neural pathways. As a result, a talented basketball player perceives the ball as just an extension of himself says Nicolelis.

    Similarly, Nicolelis thinks in the future humans with brain implants might be able to sense X-rays, operate distant machines, or navigate in virtual space with their thoughts, since the brain will accommodate foreign objects including computers as part of itself.


    In other words, the human brain creates models of tools and machines all the time, and brain implants will just extend that capability. Nicolelis jokes that if he ever opened a retail store for brain implants, hed call it MachinesRUs.

    But, if hes right, us aint machines, and never will be.

    Posted by
    Robert Karl Stonjek