FWIW, when I discussed Steve's design for a new brain imaging instrument with some mind-uploading friendly brain imaging experts (who have designed new brain-matter-analysis instruments themselves), their reaction was that it seemed like the data would probably be too noisy to be useful. They weren't ready to call it a worthless idea, but they didn't feel it was as promising as various other areas of brain imaging research...
Since it's not my area of expertise, when I got that opinion, I decided to ignore the matter and wait for the brain imaging experts to figure out that stuff... I don't think diverting resources from AGI to brain imaging is a particularly good idea. Brain imaging is way better funded and staffed than AGI already. And other stuff is way better funded and staffed than either of these. $$ and human effort for exploring alternate speculative brain imaging methods should be taken from somewhere other than the meager amount currently allocated to AGI... Of course knowing a lot more about the brain would be useful for AGI, but A) I have no reason to believe that AGI is unachievable in the absence of this info B) I don't see any clear argument that drastically better brain imaging is going to be available rapidly, no matter what we do C) I personally am way better trained for AGI work than brain imaging work, so for me to focus on the latter instead I'd need to have a really really really strong reason to think it would pay off... ... Ben G On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 6:57 PM, Russell Wallace <[email protected]>wrote: > On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 11:44 PM, Steve Richfield < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> For some unknown reason (Ben, here is your big chance to explain), there >> seems to be nearly universal resistance to even speculating on how a few >> million dollars could answer most of the remaining questions needed to >> build an AGI. I think the answer is that AGI people can't bear to even >> consider that their path to success might be blocked by a present lack of >> knowledge. Are there OTHER opinions here as to the mental defect that >> underlies this resistance? >> > > Sure. > > I mean, suppose for the sake of argument you're right about all this, > where does that lead? > > On this list, nowhere! We haven't got a few million dollars, or the > expertise to evaluate whether it's feasible to build a device such as you > describe in the near future, or to help build it if so. > > You need to be talking to hardware people, neuroscientists, funding > agencies, the people who can help you get such a device built. If you're > right about some AGI people being qualified to analyze the output of same, > by all means come back and try to recruit them after you have a device that > produces output to analyze. > *AGI* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/212726-11ac2389> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org "My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" -- Friedrich Nietzsche ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-c97d2393 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-2484a968 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
