> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Adrian Hon
[snip]
> > 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.
Huh? Jacob and Monod discovered that genes do turn each other on and off, a
few decades ago. The role of such operations is unclear, but it is a
candidate as a mechanism for cell differentiation and to explain why the
difference in gene numbers between humans and other species isn't as great
as most expected.
> 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.
Are you saying that the mechanisms by which genes give rise to human brains
is well enough understood that we know that such interactions are not
involved? You said "cell signalling," but that's not what I was referring
to.
> 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.
Encoding information is not the same concept as a data structure. Encoding
is what represents what; the structure is how the encoded data is organized.
> > 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.
I'm not sure what your point is. Of course it is possible to create a human
brain. The universe did it, with or without intention, depending on your
spiritual beliefs. I thought we were talking about being able to reproduce
its functions sufficiently to create A.I. in a short time frame. And I
can't see how A.I. can be defined without requiring language.
Nick
