________________________________
From: Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, February 7, 2014 7:09 AM
Subject: Re: Eidetic memory and the comp hypothesis
Thanks for the link Chris.
>>It has also been discovered, some years ago, that glial cells are involved in
>>chronic pain. Since then, I follow them closely. They do communicate
>>chemically in some wavy way, and they do communicate to, and influence,
>>neurons.
I still tend to think that neurons play the key role in the information
treatment, and probably in the basic loops needed for consciousness, but I
would not been astonished, that glial cells would be important for surviving
some long period of time.
(Needless to say, for the UDA reversal, this is only a matter of making the
substitution level lower, and this does not change the consequences.)
I agree that it seems highly probable that most of the brain activities
underlying the mind -- out of which we experience the spontaneously arising
sense of self, the awareness of that self and all the other magnificent
mysteries of consciousness -- are occurring primarily as phenomenon primarily
rooted in the electro-chemical chirping, crackling activity occurring in our
highly folded cortexual sheets and the hugely parallel neural/axonal networks.
Though if indeed (as it appears) glial cells play a key role in cementing
memories (and maybe in some chemically based manner perhaps even storing long
term memories -- perhaps like an archival storage medium for (slow) chemically
mediated recall mechanisms -- then, in fact, it would be impossible to describe
the working of the brain/mind without factoring in and understanding their
role(s). It seems to me that -- at least some large portion of -- the glial
cells may play a role like the one I am conjecturing.
Is the glial brain underlying the cortexual sheet is in fact a kind of chemical
only -- and hence much slower by orders of magnitude -- processor that the
brain/mind uses as a permanent archive for long term memories that adjacent
populations of neurons use kind of like a hard drive or maybe an archival
drive/tape backup? It certainly seems like these cells are playing some role;
what if our brains have glial cell hard drives.
I was not aware of the role these types of brain cells (comprising around 90%
of the brains cells) also are somehow involved in mediating the experience of
pain (what about other sensations and emotions?) -- that is interesting.
In terms of information theory -- or comp in this case -- not all that much
changes. It is more like an extension of the electro-chemical cortex and the
operations it performs are chemically mediated and so are much slower than
electrical switches. However I also agree that this would not qualitatively
change the essential nature of the brain as a biological computer, albeit an
incredibly complex and highly parallel one with vast numbers of neurons and
even vaster numbers of vertices.
Chris
Bruno
On 06 Feb 2014, at 07:59, Chris de Morsella wrote:
Liz – The pace of what we are discovering about the brain makes everything we
know about it a moving goal post; case in point the key role it now appears
astrocytes or glial cells play in the formation of memories. Astrocytes account
for around 90% of all brain cells. This indicates to my view of things that
until we really do understand the actual mechanisms (and the second follow on
ring of emergent meta-mechanisms that characterize and emerge within vastly
parallel networks as well), it is too early to put hard upper boundaries on
capacity. If we are just now discovering previously overlooked critical actors
for the formation of memories; do we even really know that much about the
physical mechanisms for memory in the brain?
>This is, as you may have guessed, a subject in which I am fairly interested; I
>believe a rigorous micro and dynamic network scale understanding of brain
>functioning is required in order to form a theory of consciousness, self-aware
>intelligence etc. I also feel we are getting tantalizingly close to a kind of
>gestalt moment when all the pieces will emerge naturally as one whole dynamic
>elegant theory that will win someone a Nobel prize and a grand understanding
>of the brain/mind and of ourselves emerges.
>Cheers,
>Chris
>
>From: [email protected]
>[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of LizR
>Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2014 9:32 PM
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Re: Eidetic memory and the comp hypothesis
>
>This is a very interesting point. What is the estimated capacity of the human
>brain? I seem to recalls some 10^17 bits being mentioned somewhere, or at
>least that figure has stuck in my mind (but not having an eidetic memory, or
>much of a normal one, I can't say where from).
>
>On 6 February 2014 15:58, Richard Ruquist <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>An aspect of my string cosmology is that the metaverse contains a 4D-space (in
>which one space axis is time)
>that records every event that ever happened in this and every universe much
>like the Akashic Records.
>Eidetics and gurus can apparently time travel in this block-space.
>Richard
>
>On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 8:32 PM, Pierz <[email protected]> wrote:
>The phenomenon of eidetic (photographic) memory is well established as a
>reality. For an example of what it means, read the top answer to thisquora.com
>question. People with this gift/disability remember every moment of their
>lives in perfect detail. To me this raises real questions about the comp
>hypothesis and the 'yes doctor'. Consider the 'RAM' required for this type of
>recall. Memories are 3d and 'retina' resolution. If we consider that an hour
>of Blu-ray footage consumes about 30Gb, then some rough calculations show that
>Blu-ray quality footage of an entire life of 60 years would consume around
>17,000 terabytes of storage. But these memories include tactile, olfactory and
>cognitive channels as well as visual and auditory information, and of course
>the resolution of the visual system is far better than Blu-ray. I'd take a
>rough guess and say that full recording of a person's mental experience in all
>external and internal channels would have to
require hundreds or even thousands of times the bandwidth of Blu-ray. But even
at what I'd think would be an extremely conservative estimate of a hundred
times, we're up near two million terabytes (two exabytes). What's more, there
appears to be no strain, no sign of running out of space at all, as if capacity
was simply not an issue. This type of example makes me really question whether
digital prosthetics are a real possibility at all - it looks to me strongly
suggestive of a totally different way of recording information, or even of the
possibility that recording and storage are the wrong metaphor entirely.
'Christian' in the above quora response says that he has little means of
distinguishing a memory from a live experience, making for a very confusing
mental life. This type of memory looks more like a kind of time travel than a
recording. Perhaps this is still compatible with Bruno's version of comp - the
universal subject inhabiting the pure space
of Number - but it's more problematic for step one of the whole argument that
leads to this vision, namely saying 'yes' to a digital brain.
>
>
>
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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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