From: "Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > A few hundred genes that can turn one another on and off, creating a huge > state space!
Well, you don't know that. I very much doubt that it's true, either, and it's certainly not the case in cell signalling pathways that have been studied so far in the human brain - at least, not for the majority of genes. True, classes of neurones will have different transcriptional regulators meaning that different genes will be expressed, but there aren't any large amounts of on-going dynamic gene switching or modulation going on during either a developing or mature brain. It's also important not to ignore the role of modulating synaptic strengths as well as the formation and dying off of connections; it's thought that the strength of synapses is largely responsible for encoding information. > If I had to bet, I'd bet that we'll find some other way before we can > imitate the way our brains do it, just as we have found other ways to > imitate the body's mechanical abilities. On the other hand, I'd bet it'll > be a long darn time, given that intelligence is closely related to, and > perhaps indistinguishable from language. And we don't understand how > language works. Ask anyone who works on natural language parsing. I don't think that in order to create an artificial intelligence we have to fully understand everything that that AI is capable of; it's more than possible to understand how to create a human brain and not know exactly how higher level cognitive functions operate. Adrian ======================================================================== Adrian Hon | www.vavatch.co.uk Generation Mars and New Mars | www.genmars.com - www.newmars.com Astrobiology: The Living Universe | www.ibiblio.org/astrobiology
