On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 8:49 AM John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 7:31 AM Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> > wrote: > > *> My intuition is that if we are going to successfully imitate biology we >> must model the various neurotransmitters.* > > > That is not my intuition. I see nothing sacred in hormones, I don't see > the slightest reason why they or any neurotransmitter would be especially > difficult to simulate through computation, because chemical messengers are > not a sign of sophisticated design on nature's part, rather it's an example > of Evolution's bungling. If you need to inhibit a nearby neuron there are > better ways of sending that signal then launching a GABA molecule like a > message in a bottle thrown into the sea and waiting ages for it to diffuse > to its random target. > I don't think the point is about the specific neurotransmitters (NTs) used in biological brains, but that there are multiple NTs which each activate separable circuits in the brain. It's probably adaptive to have multiple NTs, to further modularize the brain's functionality. This may be an important part of generalized intelligence. > I'm not interested in brain chemicals, only in the information they > contain, if somebody wants information to get transmitted from one place > to another as fast and reliablely as possible, nobody would send smoke > signals if they had a fiber optic cable. The information content in each > molecular message must be tiny, just a few bits because only about 60 > neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine, norepinephrine and GABA are known, > even if the true number is 100 times greater (or a million times for that > matter) the information content of each signal must be tiny. Also, for the > long range stuff, exactly which neuron receives the signal can not be > specified because it relies on a random process, diffusion. The fact that > it's slow as molasses in February does not add to its charm. > Similarly, NTs that produce effects on different timescales, or in terms of more diffuse targets, may provide functionality that a single, fast NT cannot achieve. You might call it Evolutionary bungling, but it's not necessarily the case that faster is always better. I sometimes wonder how an AI that could process information a million times faster than a human could be capable of talking to humans. Imagine having to wait 20 years for a response - subjectively, that's how it might feel to a super-fast AI. Terren -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAMy3ZA_fxGMxWE-o8DzT7wWGimAJzV3B%2BOi4s3ozcP3-hfq4Ow%40mail.gmail.com.
