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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32961 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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That this is all that we are.

But like, we're not though. If you duplicated the topology of our neural networks and emulated the activating function properly for all the different kinds of neurons in our heads AND you somehow emulated hormone levels and feedbacks and all the rest. Then I'd agree with you.

With most materialists if they understand how the brain works you can come to an understanding that its possible to replicate it in software. We're just not there yet. And the "topology" of connections is very, very important. Why TF we aren't studying that to an extreme and trying to precisely map what parts of the brain are connected with what other in extreme detail is beyond me.

But we are doing that and have been for decades. E.g. the visual cortex is organized into layers, with strong feedforward connections along with selective feedback, with some additional magic that approximates convolution and pooling. The issue is that mapping the entire network structure of the human brain is a very hard problem.

Why TF we aren't studying that to an extreme and trying to precisely map what parts of the brain are connected with what other in extreme detail is beyond me

The last time we tried that The Experts™ decided it would be a splendid idea to try to use that knowledge to solve social problems, and that's not even the most egregious thing they were playing with.

If I saw them trying it again in the age of cyber-surveillance and Big Data, it would quite possibly be enough to push me into no-shit terrorism.

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