Do you want to be Transhuman?

So basically, someone realized that the human brain really does work on completely different information principles from AI. Which we've known for quite a long time.

The human brain operates on data association and reinforcement that superficially resembles a Bayes net in concept, but the specifics make it work in practice more like a really, really fucked up cache.

Well this is the first attempt that I know of that describes what differentiates Artificial intelligence from an actual conciousness. Also, the issue that was raised, IIRC, is that in this theory of the conciousness, the brain integrates data with no loss of information, whereas the XOR logic gate (and I think several others) requires 2 bits of input and outputs only 1, resulting in the loss of information that, according another article I saw, would make if impossible for any real computer (without infinite computational power and memory) to recreate the processes going on in the brain in a finite amount of time.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. No loss of information? Sure, the information is there. Somewhere. In a way. Kind of. <_<

But the links you need to access to get the data get lost or "misplaced" all the damn time: and, I'm not even talking thanks to individual neurone death. It's the links and bylinks of the pathways in human brains that "store" data by recreating it every time you need it. Neurones themselves don't store "data", as such, as the chemical footprints they deal with aren't the data: but, a chain of chemical links that you can find in a particular pathway of neurones that suddenly flash into active operation under specific circumstances? There's your data. Which... if you can't recreate the pathways thanks to a few dropped connections... you've just lost. Sure, you might have something close enough for government work — or even have a new pathway with similar data form. But, you've lost something. Until or if you can get those gaps filled up and recreate the full, "older" pathway.

Which is why the smallest unit you have for thought processing isn't a neurone. It's a synapse.

And, because we're talking a wide number of neurochemicals in the shape of many shades of variation... it's hardly 0/1.

This is old news. <confused> And, very basic neurochemistry and cognitive science.

edited 27th Jun '14 7:43:09 AM by Euodiachloris

Haven't read all pages, just responding to concept. (Have I posted here before? Can't remember).

On one hand, I often say that "I want to be a head in a jar like on Futurama." This has nothing to do with immortality projects, everything to do with being annoyed at functions of my lower body (I'm female and every month... it's pretty metal. I've even seen specialists who could do nothing for me), I hate having to pee all the time... (again, something that I've not been helped with in the organic sense). I mean, if I could just cruise around on a head with a giant mech like Nixon had in the series, I think I could be quite happy. (I'm asexual, so I won't miss *that* ).

However, the whole brain-uploading thing isn't for me. I'd rather trust a Higher Power that I'm not even sure exists with my "soul" than "the devils I know" - ie. humans and glitchy computers. In fact, I'm pretty sure if someone tried to upload my mind because of some sort of "save everyone" ethic, if we got to that point, they'd try to tweak data on mine. They'd want to get rid of my delightful insanity, my open embrace of certain matters of "irrationality," such as my swaying emotions. In other words, I think anyone trying to "preserve" me would probably find themselves "improving" me in ways that essentially "kill" me, anyway. So, even if it turns out "there is no Heaven," I, like Peeta Mellark, would rather "die as myself" if I can than be changed by a system.

Even crynoics is something I'm suspicious of. From specials I've seen regarding it, apparently, the biggest facility for it is in PHOENIX, ARIZONA. Having grown up outside Phoenix, this morbidly amuses me. I mean, in the even of a catastrophic breakdown in the system and if all their generators go... um... Popcicles... in Phoenix! I am wondering why they didn't do the thing they did with the Seed Vault and stick it in a naturally cold area to take advantage of nature in the case of a catastrophic failure of the power grid, where nature would give a bit of a window to get things optimal again. I think being a popcicle in Phoenix is just daring fate.

There's also the fact that I don't really think I deserve it. Humans are not omnibenevolent - they demand things from other humans in order to gauge worth. Analyzing it, I really don't think that, on the whole, I'm much worth the trouble. For some of us, our major redeeming quality is that "One day, they'll be dead and gone." You can put up with us for a little while knowing that. I'm loved by some people, but I don't think the whole would want to put up with me forever.

edited 27th Jun '14 9:04:57 AM by Shadsie

The brain does not even have precise information, or "data" as one would call it on a computer.

When we "access" any memory...any memory, no matter how vivid it is, all you are recollecting is the idea of it you have now. But it is not a specific piece of data that is stable and completely recoverable in its pure state as it was from the beggining...

@Eudiachlodis: It's referring to loss of information in a different sense than simply "forgetting" as we understand it; in the example mentioned, it's referring to the fact that a XOR gate's output inherently reduces 2 bits of information to 1, and can only be predicted given of the inputs.

Try to read the linked paper; the basic framework of this model dates back to 2006, but this is from May of this year. It's a lot more than just "basic neuroscience" as you put it. This whole obstacle to sentient computers is a conjecture made by another computer scientist, who was arguing more that the brain's process of integration is not possible with computers as we know them, which doesn't require nor imply perfect retention of information or ever perfectly lossless integration; the point was more that the brain cannot hemeroge information like a computer does-as a normal consequence of the process rather than from imperfections and errors

edited 27th Jun '14 10:12:22 AM by Archereon

...I'll admit that I doubt humans could create an AI from scratch (Maybe we could simulate physics and clone (Or even create) a brain that way, but it would be expensive and probably a violation of ethics. Not that that would stop us), but there are pretty basic workarounds to the, "Less input than output," thing. Formal logic—especially when done by a computer—is powerful as all hell.

I think you're misunderstanding something. If the universe is only turing complete, then no subsystem of it can be more then turing complete. So a powerful enough computer could just simulate a brain.

Given a purely physical, merely turing complete universe, a computer made out of logic gates can be conscience.

@Archereon: I wasn't even talking about forgetting. Which is often an active process in the brain, rather than a passive one. Many pathways are deliberately broken apart when they cease to be useful. While others get mislaid. After all, there's a major difference between repurposing, deleting and losing. They don't even use the exact same mechanisms. There's a world of difference between junking stuff that was filed as short-term memory and misplacing some of it before it gets laid down in long-term and killing a synaptic pathway via head-trauma. However, either way; you're not going to get either fully back, no matter how hard you try to recreate the pathways because you've got either active components missing or that's just the way short-to-long-term memory shunting works. No getting to long-term = bye-bye for whole chunks of "data". Which may's well never have existed. That's the whole problem with antegrade amnesia or transneuronal degradation.

I wasn't kidding when I said that the brain actively recreates the "data" it's after every time it needs it (for a given definition of "need"). :| It's really not like it's stored in a series of 1s and 0s. Nothing in the brain is simply yes/no, thanks to the the various flavours either/or, neither/nor, "perhaps", "both" and "all".

In short: it's awfully hard to say how much "data" the brain can "store" in order to try measuring it. As... it's in the link-building business. Not the storage one. <_< At best, we're better of trying to compare processing speed and accuracy (including side-processing involving error checking). :| The data is the software. Kind of.

I did read the paper. I also saw telegraphs, railways and canals. <_< Granted, I do it, too. -_- It's hard not to.

edited 29th Jun '14 4:13:05 PM by Euodiachloris

@merlin: Doesn't Bell's Theorem essentially preclude the universe being Turing complete in any model of the universe that incorporates local realism?

@Euodiachloris: Memories are stored, however, in the relationship between neurons, which can be reduced to the physical state of the system, if we're assuming the brain's functions arise solely from physical, classical (ie entirely deterministic) phenomena. In theory a classical computer should, with sufficient power, be able to simulate such a system in a reasonable amount of time. However, the most significant part of the IIT theory of consciousness is that it arises from systems that process information in a certain way, which is what allows a hypothetical photodiode to be conscious (albeit minimally so) while IBM's Watson is not. Once again, see the paper.

edited 29th Jun '14 1:00:33 PM by Archereon

I want to be Transhuman in the sense that I want to become more than a human, go beyond boring human natural abilities. There is simply nothing an untrained person like myself can do, and by ascending I could become actually worth some consideration.

As it is, you need to be a very special kind of human to go through all the training necessary to become one of the "elite". I want to become powerful by nature, not by training.

You'd still need training to learn how to use your new abilities though.

True. However, it would certainly be less demanding and exclusive than, say, the training Americans would need to undergo to become a powerful person today, such as SEAL training. Not everyone is fit for it - they say so.

I don't want to be a boring nothing. I want to be a somebody. I want to be able to change things if I wanted to.

What honestly makes you think transhumanism would make you more important than you are now? Like, I guess if you live in the first world you might get better enhancement than others, but rich, and military/police/scientist folk would get even better stuff.

Like, you could be a living god compared to a modern human, but the rich would be overdeities. So basically things would just balance out to you being just as powerless as you are now, if not moreso.

edited 29th Jun '14 11:54:27 PM by Know-age

I am a rather well off individual myself, and with certain things about to come to fruition, you never know - I might get to be an overdeity myself.

I've been without power my entire life. I want to rectify that.

edited 29th Jun '14 11:58:07 PM by NickTheSwing

I'll take your word for it.

Just want to make sure people realize that having ~transhuman superpowers~ probably won't seem quite so awesome when anyone can buy them.

It'll probably feel even less awesome when everyone is expected to buy them to be employable, whether they want any given enhancement or not.

Don't want to plug Microsoft Lolcrash into your organs? Too fucking bad — it's policy for every company out there.

Presuming anyone is working at all. If we're at the point of interfacing meat with machine to that degree, then we're way past the point where machines are sophisticated enough to be doing most the work.

The level of automation we already have is displacing human workers. That will only increase as machines become more sophisticated and can solve real world "problems" in real time.

Human employees would be an exception rather than the rule and even then, only in tasks that machines can't (yet) fulfill.

So M$ Lolcrash may not be as much of a necessity.

The irrelevance of human input (and even human society if we're being honest) in the face of full automation in a posthuman world tends to be tossed to the side for people who like aesops and stories about normal humans being oppressed by people who don't actually need them anymore.

Given the current attitudes towards productivity I'm of the belief that is kind of inevitable. Companies are going to get whatever edge they can get above each other, and morals and ethics are only important when they cut the bottom line.

Though I'm of the opinion that is a complete different problem than transhumanism itself per se. It's not transhumanism's fault when society decides that being able to work 24/7 is an "improvement".

We already see this kind of social preference / job discrimination with other things that are prohibitively expensive for most people: Mainly, college education. My fiancee' knows editing, copywriting, graphic design and how to fix and rebuild computers. He knows this from experience and from being in (an ultimately failed) business with his father. He does NOT however, have a university degree saying "I can do this stuff," therefore, he has bounced around job to job as a retail manager. I have some college, but find "finishing up" to be prohibitively expensive, especially with LIFE having a way of messing up one's credit to get huge loans and certain illnesses and life-situations getting in the way.

So, I can *definitely* imagine a future where only people whose parents were rich enough to get them the expensive multifunctional robotic-arms or make sure their brain is backed up have a shot at *not* having to take the "lowliest" jobs and worry that, sometimes, dinner might have to come from change in the cushions between the couch or from a trash can.

I already have a weird relationship with automated grocery scanners in grocery stores. On one hand, when I'm shopping, it's usually with my guy, who almost never uses anything but those. I understand... They're convenient, neither of us like dealing with humans much... However, if I am shopping alone, I almost always go to a human clerk. I know where this comes from. My parents were both grocery store workers. They worked in the butcher and bakery departments, respectively, but they were proud union members and when those things were installed in the stores they worked in, there was a huge union/employee backlash against "machines edging out workers who need jobs/money/to live." Sometimes, I use the automated things on my own (if there's a long line), but I still have an impulse to go with the human touch, because of human need. I've found, however, that at present, the automated systems need human babysitters because sometimes, the computers just don't know what to do with weighing produce and you can't argue with them when you know something's been marked on sale that has the sticker, but has been neglected to be put in the system.

Technology as a way to reach "transhumanism" is grotesquely overrated.

Machines are not as adaptable as humans.

I don't think full automation is something to worry about. Mass unemployment would be catastrophic for society. Corporate big-wigs wouldn't be making more money, they'd be completely fucking themselves over. Look at all the mass protests and rioting because of unemployment in the past few years, and imagine that on a global scale. Who wants that? Where's the economic benefit in that?

Some intellectuals talk about full automation being a good thing because it will allow people to focus on 'higher ideas' and 'intellectual pursuits', but that's kind of like Fan Myopia, isn't it?

EDIT: Basically, what I'm saying is that nobody's going to invest in technology which screws over society. Even the greediest CEOs recognise that. You may as well invest in nuclear powered cars for everyone.

EDIT V2: Also, I find that most of the people who preach about or panic about transhumanism tend to have a very loose grip on reality and have spent too much time with their noses in books - or, in this case, on the internet. It kind of reminds me of the futurist movement around the previous turn of the century.

edited 2nd Jul '14 3:06:16 PM by Jetstreamiest

What's to say that, in a highly technological world where human-machine interfaces and prosthetics are common-place, the cost of such things would be prohibitively expensive?

Sure, there would no doubt be high-end devices and augmentations that have all the bells and whistles but there would be cheaper options that would suffice - just as you can currently buy super-duper high-end consumer electronics or you can buy far less expensive ones that'll do the job.

By the time things multifunctional robot arms or brain back up systems are common, there would be models of them that may cost no more than a low-to-mid-range laptop or fridge costs these days. Moore's Law and economy of scale would be factors.

Or it may be a course of nanobots you get injected with that will modify you from within and the rich can afford to have more augmentation treatments but the poorer people would still be able to afford some level.

Either way, or any other way for that matter, the rich would have cooler stuff but it wouldn't mean that everyone else is doomed to be unmodified humans grubbing in the dirt as envisioned by the overly pessimistic.

Edit re EDIT V2. We can dream, can't we? Frankly, you could have said back in the 1950s that anyone talking about putting someone on the moon had "spent far too much time reading Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and other such tommy-rot".

edited 2nd Jul '14 3:17:38 PM by Wolf1066

Going to the moon and fundamentally altering the entirety of humanity are like apples and oranges, man. I don't think the majority of people will support the idea of further widening social gaps, and if anything's been proven in recent years it's that no collection of corporate bag-munchers or corrupt politicians can stand up to the will of the people.