Self-Assembling Brain, Peter Robin Heisinger

Science and Technology
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I was on the way to revisit Lausten’s suggested ‘Nature of Reality’ because Alan Wallace said a few things that are worth highlighting as he makes such a good example of someone who’s sealed himself within mindscape. His ideas comes across as being totally oblivious to the fact of our biological origins. But that’s just my first late night impressions, I’ve been wanting to do a focused listen through.

I have some free time for a couple days so though I get it done now, but stumbled on this, thought I’d just take a peek, but Peter Hiesinger was too real and fascinating to stop listening.

It’s amazing and a wonderful example of a point I keep trying to make. How the deepest answers will not be found within the genius mindscapes of philosophical/mathematical arguments and conclusion.

The important answers will be learned through carefully observing nature/evolution/earth along with wet and squishy biology. Yes, of course, always processed through that same amazing mindscape - but with a constant appreciation that the touchstone with reality will only be found, out there, in the material world, not within the mindscape of our conjectures.

The other thing this video does, is add another layer of texture to one of those memes I’ve been trumpeting as much as possible, because I think it’s such a fundamental key to clear understanding.

We cannot understand an organism, without also understanding the environment it’s embedded within.

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How Do Neural Networks Grow Smarter? - with Robin Hiesinger

How does a neural network become a brain?

While neurobiologists investigate how nature accomplishes this feat, computer scientists interested in artificial intelligence strive to achieve this through technology. The Self-Assembling Brain tells the stories of both fields, exploring the historical and modern approaches taken by the scientists pursuing answers to the quandary: What information is necessary to make an intelligent neural network? …

Peter Robin Hiesinger is professor of neurobiology at the Institute for Biology, Freie Universität Berlin. He runs an active neurogenetics research laboratory and teaches students at graduate and undergraduate levels.

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http://selfassemblingbrain.com/

Note that @ 54:00 the artificial construct that measures brain activity employs a coiled tube, a model of a very large microtubule,

Now imagine 175 billion of these functioning sensory data processors in a connected network. AI ?

How big is GPT-3?

GPT-3’s full version has a capacity of 175 billion machine learning parameters . GPT-3, which was introduced in May 2020, and was in beta testing as of July 2020, is part of a trend in natural language processing (NLP) systems of pre-trained language representations.

It beat the world champion GO player convincingly, by “learning” to play the game from a lot of recorded games and finally by playing what it learned against itself and spontaneously gaining a masterclass knowledge of the game.

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I knew you’d love this stuff.

And then what?
I need to listen to Hiesinger video again, perhaps get his book, but I think it’s safe to say an underlying message was that consciousness is all about the experiencing, an exchange of input and output and feedback and whatnot between your body/brain/environment and mind.

The new breed of neuroscientists tell us that the mind is the inside reflection of our body/brain, experiencing and navigating its life.

Too much of philosophical chatter still seems shackled to a notion of consciousness, or mind, as an object, rather than an ever changing result of the entire body processing its actions within its particular environment.

Without that dynamic interchange, consciousness/mind runs down, the same way a dynamo runs down once we stop spinning it.

It’s not that complicated.

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Well that actually refers to Lausten’s* video - Alan Wallace in The Nature of Reality A Dialogue, since this afternoon I spent a number of hours listening to it carefully.
After listening to him, I don’t think much of Alan Wallace line of reasoning or his evidence, seemed a lot of apples and cheese going on. Also he his spiel reminded me too much of the Hoffman, Tegmark school of reasoning. Wrote up a bunch of notes, if I get up the gumption, I might write up something about it.

*I can’t find that thread and it’s too late to worry about looking for it. There’s time.

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[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:3, topic:8439”]
Too much of philosophical chatter still seems shackled to a notion of consciousness, or mind, as an object, rather than an ever changing result of the entire body processing its actions within its particular environment.

Well, according to Anil Seth, the brain is very much an evolutionary result of natural selection for survival skills.
This is apparent in the fact that the brain actually does fool itself as a result of a survival mechanism.
I have shown this before but the Chessboard example is a remarkable example of a form of “illusionary light/dark color shading” in all healthy brains. This is an evolved “hardwired” survival mechanism, but it presents an unreal image in the brain. A true “controlled hallucination” that is impossible to intentionally correct.
The “illusion” remains even if you are aware of it. It is a survival mechanism.

This has to do with the real life problem of predators hiding in shaded areas to avoid detection. After all they evolved camouflage in order to avoid easy detection. So the prey has learned to better detect a shading aberration.

image
The squares marked A and B are the same shade of gray!

Try as you might, your brain cannot avoid being fooled by this optical illusion. We have this discussed before in relationship in context of “controlled hallucination”, but it is a true result of evolution by natural selection.

This is why Seth concluded that the brain is the ultimate survival tool, that started with the fundamental “fight or flight instinct”, which already started with a purely primitive chemical sensory avoidance response and just kept refining in all organisms to aid in beneficial survival strategies.

It has application in AI design.