On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 7:51 AM spudboy100 via Everything List < everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
*> Connectome studies hold that "The Map is The Landscape."* > And if the map is so detailed that you can't tell the difference then it's 100% true that "The Map *IS *The Landscape". *> When people like Ray Kurzweil were pontificating 25 years ago, it seemed > back then like computer science would be roaring to The Singularity. Today, > much of the goodies forecast by Kurz and everyone else seems sluggish,* > Since 1990 Ray Kurzweil has made147 precise predictions about the date by which certain advances in information technology will be achieved, at the time most technology gurus said his predictions were ridiculous, but 86% of them turned out to be correct and only 14% were wrong. I can't think of any other prognosticator on any subject that has a better track record than that. But in one prediction he was too conservative, decades ago Kurzweil said a computer would pass the Turing Test by 2029, but it passed it in 2023; he also predicted that the Singularity will happen by 2045, but the events of the last few months have led me to believe that he may be too conservative on that prediction also. > Uploading seems as far away to me, as ever. > As far away as ever?! I think the time when the sun turns into a red giant and incinerates the Earth is closer this year than it was last year but if after the passing of years you think the time when uploading is possible has not become closer that can only mean it will never happen because you think uploading is physically impossible. Why is that? Do you think chemistry is sacred but electronics is not? John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> u7v > > 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. > > > -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0qdK1tJeyBAsjnWwgibBGrxoEMgvMe3ehp1Zm_AgGFJA%40mail.gmail.com.
