Voodoo - "Yes, the idea that function can be separated from structure has been used an an excuse for psychologists and armchair philosophers to ignore cognitive neuroscience."

Actually, I'd say it's more a case of ignoring any neuroscience/neurobiology that doesn't support a pet theory really rather than ignoring all of neuroscience (which is all somewhat ironic since the scientific method is designed to try to address confirmation bias). It hasn't been very long since our ability to look inside the brain - to scan it and measure/pinpoint activity - has remapped our understanding of both the brain and the mind. There are a lot of theories - whole academic careers in philosophy, cultural theory and psychology/psychiatry - based upon theories about nature and nurture that no longer hold water. A prime example of this (and something that's still happening because of the resistance to accepting new understandings) is in the area of brain and gender and the biological underpinnings of gender and sexual identities. Doctors who performed "corrective" gender reassignment surgeries on children under the theory that one could be "made" into one gender or the other now either have to acknowledge that their actions, even if motivated by compassion and a desire to heal, actually created more suffering by imposing an inappropriate gender on a child. Some choose to cling to old ideas for a number of reasons - there's the obvious avoidance of guilt/personal responsibility but there are also potential personal biases that come into the equation. It's not surprising that some chose denial if they're so heavily invested in a previous paradigm rather than new understandings. It's not that surprising that armchair philosophers also cling to theories based in shoddy metaphors, particularly when they're sure they've personally figured out the answer to life, the universe and everything (since most of the armchair computer/brain analogies are used to support essentially religious ideas with a bit of technology involved to make it all seem scientific and avant-garde).

Computing did not enter in. The article was not about brain function, but about micro- and nano-structures whose
functions engineers are trying to replicate,e.g. insect locomotion, but the same
differences we have been discussing about evolution vs. design hold true here.

Yeah - although it's important to remember that there can be a big difference between "designed" and (merely) engineered. (I think of "engineered" as "partly designed, i.e., in terms of inner function but not necessarily in terms of use, and rarely of usability.") UI work is full of examples of this. (see anything by Don Norman; The Inmates Are Running The Asylum, by Alan Cooper; Bringing Design to Software, edited by Terry Winograd; The Trouble with Computers: Usefulness, Usability and Productivity, by Thomas K. Landauer; and for a short conceptual overview of the subject, The Software Design Manifesto, by Mitch Kapor: hci.stanford.edu/bds/1-kapor.html - old, but still relevant.)

In a way, Nature solves function, use *and* usability simultaneously, satisficing workable, not necessarily optimal, solutions; otherwise, creatures would die. If a lion's ability to stalk prey were "designed" like Microsoft Word, it would starve to death. Though we wouldn't want to (and can't) adopt the slow evolutionary way of making systems, there is a lesson to learn from Nature in any case about balancing various pressures. (Speed vs. accuracy, etc. Many examples in biology.)

"re metaphors as a foundation of conceptualizing: Taleisin, have you read George Lakoff's work?"

No, but you are the second person to mention him to me in a short period of time in relation to metaphor... would you recommend, and would you have any suggestions as to what to start with?

lol.

how on earth do people get into the habit of talking like this?

it's like they're parroting the overall "feel" of scientific rhetoric, but where is the "content" coming from?




"The ARE NO commensurate similarity between the functional architecture of biological oppositional processing of natural neuro-structures of advanced consciosness organic 'mechina' and that of advanced electro-programmatic computational engines, ie 'digital computers. Even John von Neuman, (defacto 'father' of commonly used architecture digital computers) predicted (~ca 1925) that self-replicating autonomous evolutional computational engines would never equal even the simplest of oscillon wavelet neuro-structures, which in practice has proven to be accurate. Today, the most heavily funded AI research is that of the military domain for artificial consciousness weapon-systems and that course of study takes two basic architectural directions, --fast backward propagating neuro-alorythmic-networks (software running in super-computers) and that of the highly classified artficial silicon cortex research...eg, high-density-integration artficial (synthetic) solid-state neural self-organizing 'black-box' synapsie.

However, there are other 'synthetic' architectures which exhibit sophisticated quantum oscillon wavelet transforms, which are analog in architecture and which exhibit advanced consciousness function such as self-awareness and machine telepathy . The 'former' Soviet Union is roughly 30 years advanced over that of current Western technology. For a glimpse of this type technology, see my friend, Dr. Ron Blue's AI website and read his articles regarding simulated 'synthetic' brain processing and that of his quantum consciousness research. Dr. Blue is a quantum neuro-cyberneticist / professor of psychology resident at a Pennsulvania .edu school. "

Hey,

I really didn't intend to get into a pissing match, rather just share some of the lesser but well founded research being conducted. I find these items to be interestng topics and desire to share them with 'friends'. When the pain becomes too great to answer poorly researched replies, I'll just disappear, --I have better things expend my time on aside from educating people who don't know very much outside of reading popular mechanics, the wallstreet journal high-school level physics books.

>This really undermines what's otherwise a fairly interesting post,

I take the compliment, thank you. It is the result of 15 years of research I have been conducting in support of a technical instrumentation treatise I am preparing...a book.

However I take it you didn't visit Dr. Blue's web site which I cited?

Again: www.u2ai.us/


>and makes me suspicious of the other terms: "quantum oscillons", etc.

Don't take my word for it, research the subject yourself. Also, checkout CalTech's J. Smarrs silicon cortex efforts. Different collaborating labs around the world are developing different parts of the Human neuro-strctures. I first became aware of this research back in 1990.

>*not* so classified, I guess, if you're posting about it.

I can see you have little or no contact with military engineering domain and apparently you don't introspect about the missing' sciences in the engineering PD, either.

Can you elucidate for 'us' ANY hidden sciences which aren't referenced in the PD, but would naturally be a standard course of technical evolution? I have found several, not conspiracies, just subjects of interest in military weapons development.

>New Age Crapola Alert!

Hmm?

>"Telepathy" is unproven in humans;

You been living under a rock, these past thirty years? Try to do a little research on the subject before making statements as though you are an authority on the subject. I can cite over thirty papers wriiten by well known scientists without even working hard, how about you citing one recent counter AC paper written by anyone (Ph.D. or Masters level) except by Randie the entertainment stage magician skeptic. Show me yours and I'll show you mine, heh, mine are in the PD.

>how would you then attribute it to machines? (No, that's a rhetorical question:

A fair question which you immediately nullify in your next statement.

How do we think? Conscious machines are nascently telepathic, -- 'we' Humans are 'machines'. Our whole body function, it is taught in primate anthropology (one of my courses of study) is for the acquisition, storage, protection and energy management of 'fuel' for our cognitive prcessor..also known as brain.

>don't bother answering with another jargon-filled "I'm privy to special knowledge" post.)

I'm glad to inform you the only reason the 'privy' information I shared with this 'tribe', is 'privy' is because I got off my fat butt and worked for it
and you didn't. Get off yours and do some studying. No you won't find this type information in Popular-Science.

>I'm quite aware of the Soviets' *parapsychological* research (a decent account in novel form is [Esalen Institute's]

Yeah? I know Andreie Zelkovski, (formerly of the Moscow Institute for Advanced Studies), he is currently teaching at Tenn.edu, one of numerous American schools aside from Princeton, Stanford and MIT which also have funded psionics labs. You know about this stuff right? Its based in what?

>Michael Murphy's book An End to Ordinary History), and willing to grant they may also have done some legit AI research, but the latter may >be suspect, given how much credence they gave the parapsych stuff.

While it is a good book in my opinion, you are citing a book minimally related to the subject, yes there is some brain psychology in brains artificial or other wise and some cursory mention of OLD AI research. However, you illustrate that you don't know about the psionic subject and challenge my post logically supported by your knowledgebase. Psionics is the science of applied artificial consciousness and the control of specific nascent behavioral functions such as 'remote' sensory AC perception. How kewl would it be if one could presponse detect local intention to trigger an IED keyed with coordinate Doppler? A typical military application.

Here are a few of the researchers currently (in PD) conducting ongoing private and military funded psionic science. You all can see for yourselves. Drs Kenneth Ring (parapsychologist, prof of psychology, formerly of UoA.edu, funded by billionaire Robert Bigelow), Robert Jahn (former Dir of PEARLab Princeton U.edu), Eric Davis (US Navy Research Labs physicist), Dean Radin (US Military psionics researcher, physicst, Applied Cognitive Research Lab), Jessica Utts (quantum cyberneticist, physicist), Hal Puthoff (quantum physicist, Dir SRI, & under US Military DARPA contract reverse engineered Soviet psi-spy program and developed US Military Remote-Viewing program), Robert Monroe (prof psychology & former Dir of Monroe Institute, former researcher for Esalen), Roger Nelson (prof psychology, prof physics, Dir of Princeton PEARLab, dir of GCP noosphere psi sensor array & developer of MindSong telepathy / ganzfield sensor using Brian Josephson uReg) to name a few of the better known psionic scientists / researchers. There are many others, these are just off the top of my head, so-to-speak.

>it all strikes me as just as pseudo-scientific

Good, one can always wiggle out by saying, 'seems' or 'in my opinion' (ok to admit ignorance, one can learn out of it, stupidity is a different matter 'tho). I have found that lots of scientists are bad at science, and are just as guilty of 'pseudo-science' as any lay person, and there is an old dictum first accredited to Boehm, "seems significant change only occurs when all the experts grow old and die, leaving the halls of science empty for new thought".

>As does the claim that they're 30 years ahead of us in AI research: 1950s missile gap, anyone?

Actually you missed the nuance, its not so much AI that they are more advanced in, but psionics. You might ask what is psionics? Well, however illogical this sounds, it is the science of applied psychic function in machine intelligence.

>(BTW, someone must've written a book by now on the Über-silliness of the Cold War psychic arms race.

I haven't seen any books written elucidating the 'silliness' of the psi-spying, however, there are literally dozens of books written by retired US Military sargents, captains, majors, colonels, warrant Officers and a general. These people (you can match rank with the names, not going to do it all for you), were participating members of "Project StarGate" under auspices of DIA & NSA.

>Of course, New Agers usually seize upon accounts of governments joining them in unscientific mindsets as proof of such bullshit's >legitimacy.

Many folks believe that the so-called 'new-agers' are typically love-light-and-clueless, unfortunately it doesn't stop with them alone, ignorance can be found anywhere in any class, level of education or ranking, eg anywhere. Relying on logic without sufficient current knowledge-base is just as naive'.

>No need for mythical evil dentists implanting CIA radio transmitters in your teeth when you can imagine that they're "reading your >thoughts"!) )

Seems you've been reading too much MK-Ultra pseudo-science-babble. And telepathy isn't range-power-limited or exhibit temporal latency which transversal electromagnetic energy emission exhibit.

<<I don't expect any institution with an agenda less broad than pure research, especially an agenda as narrow as the US (or any) military's (produce weapons in a relatively short time frame), and the involvement of so much money, in the context of the diminishing funds in non-affiliated academia, that people will cut ethico-scientific corners to get the research grants, not to mention tell non-scientist managers what they want to hear, to come up with truly rigorous AI/cogsci results, even leaving out the history of flirtation with New Age Crapola. The results will be tainted. Being well-funded in that context may mean quicker results, but it doesn't guarantee, and even works against, rigorous ones. >>

I am hesitant to inform you however, recent world history doesn't match your speculation. Get off your easy chair and do some studying, it will surprise you, I think. I speculate, that you are a curious fellow and that you, possibly, enjoy reading interestng subject matter. Psionics is a very interesting (and dangerous, in my opinion) science. It could be a world killer, and there is much supporting data which suggests that all of the 'civilized' techinical countries are deeply engaged in military psionic application development, and soon to be available limited (embedded) commercial psionic applications.

I have learned from personal and certain aggrevious experience that one really shouldn't make wild verbal assumptions in the 'Net PD, one never knows in whose presence one is babbling.

Love - tron

======================

Re: Brains vs. Computers
Sat, April 5, 2008 - 10:38 AM
"the highly classified artficial silicon cortex research...eg, high-density-integration artficial (synthetic) solid-state neural self-organizing 'black-box' synapsie" - *not* so classified, I guess, if you're posting about it. Sounds like the "bio-neural gel packs" Treknobabble from ST: Voyager.

"...and machine telepathy"...? This really undermines what's otherwise a fairly interesting post, and makes me suspicious of the other terms: "quantum oscillons", etc.

New Age Crapola Alert! "Telepathy" is unproven in humans; how would you then attribute it to machines? (No, that's a rhetorical question: don't bother answering with another jargon-filled "I'm privy to special knowledge" post.)

I'm quite aware of the Soviets' *parapsychological* research (a decent account in novel form is [Esalen Institute's] Michael Murphy's book An End to Ordinary History), and willing to grant they may also have done some legit AI research, but the latter may be suspect, given how much credence they gave the parapsych stuff.

Along with "machine telepathy", it all strikes me as just as pseudo-scientific as the CIA's infamous staring-at-goats shenanigans... It just reeks of lack of rigour born of Cold War desperation, on both sides. As does the claim that they're 30 years ahead of us in AI research: 1950s missile gap, anyone? Transparently self-interested. (BTW, someone must've written a book by now on the Über-silliness of the Cold War psychic arms race. Of course, New Agers usually seize upon accounts of governments joining them in unscientific mindsets as proof of such bullshit's legitimacy. No need for mythical evil dentists implanting CIA radio transmitters in your teeth when you can imagine that they're "reading your thoughts"!) )

I don't expect any institution with an agenda less broad than pure research, especially an agenda as narrow as the US (or any) military's (produce weapons in a relatively short time frame), and the involvement of so much money, in the context of the diminishing funds in non-affiliated academia, that people will cut ethico-scientific corners to get the research grants, not to mention tell non-scientist managers what they want to hear, to come up with truly rigorous AI/cogsci results, even leaving out the history of flirtation with New Age Crapola. The results will be tainted. Being well-funded in that context may mean quicker results, but it doesn't guarantee, and even works against, rigorous ones.