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Computer chips are printed on a single scale.  That is a very small scale is beside the point, because it is not so small that their is any major danger of a misfire of current, a mistransmition of a bit (on or off). Our neurons, by contrast, are connected by fibers that, thought already microscopic, branch fractally into smaller and smaller and scales, and at the synapses, transmit by chemical reaction.  This system seems prone to error, and indeed, mistakes and losses of memory are nothing new to human or animal experience.  I, however, being the Bible-believing oddball that I am, don't believe that God makes mistakes.  So I believer their must be some advantage in fractal neuro-pathways.  So what is it?  Here's an idea:  The smaller in scale you go, the closer you are to the quantum level, the more heisenberg's uncertainty principle impacts the system, the more likely a synapse is to "misfire" a bit (on or off, yes or no), and the less the misfire matters.  The misfire creates a new bit, a change in the information.  Now if this bit is not compatible with the task the brain is trying to complete, it is erased or ignored, stopped at that smallest scale.  If however (and this is the good part!) the new bit turns out to be useful, it would be carried into the level up, where it is evaluated in light of still more information, and this continues through the branches between and inside the neurons until only that information which fits with reality and aides with solving a problem accumulates.  If this sounds like a slow way to accumulate information, think of it this way: suppose each neuron only produced one (1) bit of information every ten minutes on average.  With the millions of neurons in your brain, and a couple of hours, and the information you already know, it wouldn't take you long to think of something no computer would have thought of.  Our brains (might) percolate information out of randomness!  Now, suppose you applied this concept to computers, replaced each circuit branch with a smaller scale network, working down as close as possible to the quantum level.  The same thing theoretically should happen: Only that information compatible with running the input program would percolate through into the output.  If nothing else, it would make for some tough PC game AI.  Any thoughts on this theory or its applications?

PS
You could even use a fractal chip and a standard chip in tandem, like the right and left sides of the brain.

ehrm, james gleick pointed out in his book "chaos" from the eighties, that chaotic structures ( e.g. a stable wave on a river, the saturn hurrican hotspot, or even the human body ) inherit stable behaviour, i mean you can not kill a man by a scratch, you can not destroy a stable wave by just passing through it, and the red dot on saturn surely wont go away any time soon, you are right assuming that "god" doesnt do any errors, in my eyes "god" is just using what is best - self organized stable systems, fewer to do for the "allmighty one" ;)

The first thing that occurred to me is that information 'fitting' with reality might operate vastly differently between the thoughts, say, of a madman & someone technically considered rational. If a person can become unmoored than imagine what might (hypothetically) happen if a computer went nuts. That said, it's an interesting theory.

stop inducing personality in computers, and global financial crashes have already been there ( last year when instead of 100 millions 100 trillions went over the bill board ) those things are nothing more, and will nothing be more than machines build by humans ( dont come with neuronal nets, they are implemented on limited state-machines, that are just tools ) what i want to say it that they dont go evil, but they can let atomic plants explode, due to wrong number interpretations, cut your leg of due to a false negative result in a scanner on a wood cutting machine, and on and on, and if the state machine is build on fractal principles nothing is won ... it should work with REAL neurons and synapses to really scare the hell out of me ... but even this wont be scaring in my lifetime ....

just ask your computer what is wrong with him, or ask another computer what is wrong with your broken computer, as long as the other computer can not tell what the problem of the other computer is there is no smartness ....

... but for fractal chip designs .. probably possible, but consider large scale electron pathways need longer times, hence the reason to make em as small as possible to reduce distances, and in fact you have kilometers of electronic pathways built in a single cpu core ... perhaps we would need more error pruning due to more massive parellel processing, e.g. run same computers parallel and check if results are the same every time ... this is already done in safety computers e.g. flight control systems for big passenger airplanes ...

question for the wisenheimers: "what distance can be travelled by light in one tick or tack of a cpu, when cpu is driven by 10Ghz"?

Well, I used to like tic  tac candies. :crazyeyes: Darn #*!%? wisenheimer. Good night. Er, actually, good morning .

Ok, three things:
(1) Thanks for replying.
(2) Let me clarify something.  I wasn't suggesting that fractal chips replace regular chips, and I had always pictured the fractal patterns as in addition to the main pathways.  I wasn't clear on that so my bad.
(3) Did I detect a note of hostility in the replies I received?  I admit that believing in a live intelligent God is not popular in the scientific community, or in the world at large, for that matter.  It's not pleasant to consider the possibility of having to answer to someone more intelligent and more powerful than you.  All the same, you start with the facts, you arrive at God.  If you start with the facts and the assumption that God doesn't exist, you end up where most of the scientific community is, because for some reason, people think that atheism is somehow scientific.  Frankly, though, modern science is based on quantum mechanics and relativity, and both theories in their present form demand the existence of realities beyond our limited perception of a small portion of 3-d space.  In the face of so many unknowns, such an assumption as atheism is unscientific and unscholarly.  Newton believed in God, Copernicus believed in God, Kepler believed in God, even Einstein believed in a God, and Stephen Hawking won't deny Him or confirm Him because even though he doesn't like the idea, he's an honest physicist, and has no scientific grounds for denying him.  I've been educated in evolutionary theory, quite thoroughly in fact; and I think it's a great idea, a triumph for wishful thinking, but Occam's Razor says the simplest explanation is the preferred one.  I understand that you are voicing your opinions, that is after all what this chat is for.  Well, now you know mine.

I don't harbour any 'hostilty' ( mighty strong word, Lar2 ) re the idea you brought to the table. As a matter of fact I think ANYTHING is possible, always. I often approach a subject above my pay grade from more of a sci-fi point of view..so many of the best writers mix huge questions  of god(s), moral conundrums, degredation of the environment, & on and on. Often in sickeningly prophetic ways.

Can't speak for any other responses except that if God is in the details then a level headed answer describing some of those very technological concerns that assail us is a valuable addition to this conversation.

Anyways...Cheers

You're right. My reaction was unnecessary and uncalled for.  I was the one being hostile. I would ask you to accept my humblest apologies and to expect better judgement in the future.

Aaaarrggghhh - knowing fractals you should both know and understand that Evolution *is* the simplest explanation even if there is a God/Creator.

Which is easier ?
1. Explicitly create everything to the last detail all at once
or
2. Create a set of rules that control an existence that may then grow/evolve ? (probably on a fractal, iterative basis, I personally believe "time" is an illusion, or more correctly just a consequence of change of state, also IMO the 4th dimension gives us relative mass not relative time).

Well Dave- seeing as how you actually eat a mandelbub occasionally :dink: .....Actually I am a proponent of the theory (ongoing) of Evolution*, and if this dialog goes on a bit be advised that a poem might come of it. Yes, I know ! Oh no ! As convinced as I might be, however, I must still entertain the other possibilities that guide & drive people in their lives. If it's possible, then I am comfortable with the mysteries.

Am intrigued & in (uninformed) agreement that time is an illusion, but have not yet gotten my pea brain around the equations & science of the matter. Will just continue to address it from a more, shall we say, intuitive angle. The complication in my mind is that if evolution happens OVER time, but that is an illusive currency, then what are the conditions under which it is occurring...? I'm serious !

It was good of Mr K. to move this into philosophy, and I'm glad Lar2 began the conversation.Would include one more emoticon ( what a word !) but none of them really fits.




* not necessarily hitched up to intelligent design, but more an adaptive drift through gargantuan time...hits and misses

Geez, I spelled mandelbulb wrong, and on THIS forum of all places ! :crazyeyes:

I see "time" in that sense simply as continuing change of state i.e. a leads to b to c to d -> obviously this gives change but does not require time to be an actual spatial dimension nor does it mean that all changes within a complicated system occur simultaneously - on the other hand that leaves (in simplistic terms) no 4th *spatial* dimension - this I see as being that which any "size" of an object (e.g. fundamental "particle") in this dimension appears to us as mass and (through E=mc^2) is directly convertible to existence within the other 3 standard dimensions (and vice-versa), so a photon has no "size" in the mass dimension, an electron a very small size and a proton and neutron considerably more etc.
I should add that I really see existence as being a system of attractors, the attractors being systems of attractors that are systems of attractors.....(repeat ad nauseam *up* as well as down).
Of course starting from the obvious potential *absolute beginning* where nothing==infinity then the number of dimensions itself could possibly be infinite though personally I doubt it since we know that as one increases dimensionality in math less and less consistency results, probably with an upper bound on the possible number of dimensions in a given system - and yes I think existence is a consequence of the rules of math, nothing more, nothing less and truly with a little random thrown in since the chances of a change of state that depends on roots producing any one of a set of the n solutions is (in Physics) absolutely equal (this could also apply to whether the result of a multiply goes down path a or path b depending on the order of multiplication if the related system is not commutative).

Ok.  We have gotten severely off topic, and I realize that was mostly my fault.  Since we're digressing, however, I agree that you can look at the universe in any number of contexts.  As a n-dimensional continuum, a massive web of cause and effect, the expression of some of some unknown equation, what have you.

The only problem is, these are thought experiments, and the universe really doesn't give a flip what you think about it.

Hmmm - even current fundamental physics experiments tell us that that may not be true i.e. how/what you think about it actually affects it's nature...... ;)
Just to add - in my suggestion that it's all systems of systems of attractors you may ask why should attractors interact/affect each other - the answer being that existence is not only the "thing" but also the definition of the rules for that "thing" (similar to self-modifying code if you're a programmer I guess....).

First let me apologize for straying off-topic but this thread has brought up a lot of thoughtful discussion so I will add to the noise.
On evolution I find a few things surprising. Some people think evolution supports the notion that life is ubiquitous and anywhere the conditions for life exist we should expect to find it (we are not special), when actually the opposite is true. Evolution supports the notion of a single "magical" act of creation that has never repeated in 3.7 billion years. We are special! Don't get me wrong I'm not a creationist, species did not suddenly appear but life did and only once as far as we can determine from DNA. Maybe someone can argue TNA and RNA represent seperate instances of creation (I dunno). Also Evolution may be lacking a key feature. Orthogenesis is the idea that evolution is guided by a driving force - and is said to be obsolete, but if even the simplest single cell can show intelligence (like seeking light, food etc) then how is intelligence not a driving force in evolution. Not that evolution is a straight line from small to large brains as sometimes having a smaller brain that requires less fuel is the more intelligent choice but that intelligence chooses everything from mates to the environment a creature lives in. Epigenetics tells us that every choice we make from the food we eat to the level of stress in our lives has an effect on inheritable gene expression. We are choosing our mutations. Evolution IS intelligent design. (we ARE the hand of god??) enuf bs, bye!

Evolution evolving intelligent creatures is a purely natural process that in itself is not intelligent design.
Those who believe in intelligent design mean from a separate intelligence - either creationism pr the idea that something intelligent started off the evolutionary process leading to ourselves (that intelligence fully understanding the processes involved),
Also I believe that given many starting conditions then eventually life and intelligence would eventually evolve - in some cases just one evolutionary tree (such as ours) in other cases many (leading to aliens) and in other cases no life at all.
But since I also believe that existence itself is truly infinite it's quite possible that all the above exist together - both as traditional multiverses (where all branch paths due to different potential changes of state exist) and at different scales e.g. such that our known universe is say a speck of dust in another one and a speck of dust in ours is an entire universe at a smaller scale etc.

Okaaaaaay.  This conversation has officially left the bounds of the universe I live in, so this is where I get off.  Have fun in whatever realities (or unrealities) it takes you.

I only hope you can find your way back. :confused:

Dave I'm going to say you missed a point in my rant. I am saying that the very first life had an intelligence and that has been ONE driving force of the design from that point on, using epigenetics. I was not talking about intelligent design as creationists define it nor simply that genetics represents a form of intelligence. Skin cells can be transformed into brain cells and each brain cell has a memory. The simplest structures in nature have a form of intelligence which contributes to the way it survives which in turn contributes to the genetic information it passes on. That is intelligence driving design!
Sorry again LAR but driving off the rails is too much fun :)

Hey. This is a teeny, slighty shaky , contribution. Perhaps the word intelligence is used too broadly....or maybe there are different forms/ways/means of intelligence. Is a cell intelligent or simply adapting- slowly over time or more speedily in a petri dish.

Lar2 is still reading these & should definitely contribute.

July begins tomorrow . Yay! :worm:

A single cell doesn't represent much intelligence that is true. But the limited intelligence they possess greatly determines their survival and thru gene expression they change the characteristics of their offspring. Imagine an amoeba living in some toxic goo. If it chooses to stay in that environment the chances of its offspring mutating are greater than if it had moved. Its limited intelligence is changing the course of evolution in a limited way but string all these little actions together over time and you have another kind of intelligence emerging.  Certainly by the time evolution gets to humans and brain cells are connected directly no-one doubts we are driving evolution (albeit erratically, pruning the tree of life, curing some mutations while creating new ones). I am just saying we aren't the first - it has always been that way.

Intelligence 1.0 - single cells exchanging data thru genetics
Intelligence 2.0 - multiple cells exchanging data electrically
3.0 - through language (ok i admit the data can be pretty shaky at this point)

Hmmmm - except at some point there was no sentience, before that not even instinct, before that no senses and before that it wasn't even called "life" ;)
Of course at the point each advance occurs it does tend to become a fairly prominent driving force in future evolution :)
I'd guess next comes telepathy, or telekinesis, or teleportation or ...
Also this isn't really off-topic since the thread got moved ;)


Edit: Posted that before the second reply - if you define "intelligence" in the sense of meaning capacity for information transfer then yes, it's involved all the way - including the "pre-life" stages....however I was using "intelligence" in the common human sense of "conscious reasoning" ;)

in applying the electronic model to the biological one, the tendency is to miss the function.The synaptic gap is the same function as the gap in the transistor structure: pnp.

There are other junction components, diodes, thermistors, capacitors that all have biological analogues. The overall sructure is therefore more resilient and more responsive to varying stimulii than an electrical or a chemical one on its own. The cell structure, has many more such electronic-like analogues.

The Biological, biochemical Electronic machine model is only the first iteration  of a fractal structure that repeats at all levels.

Sometimes we are inconsistent in our attributions to the universe. This is a cultural imposition we often do not realise. Whatever we subjectively accept about anything, my opinion is that the fractal paradigm is the best structure or paradigm we have identified to communicate, apprehend and comprehend with. Thus an empirical comparison method is essential to help each individual to choose what fractal pattern they want to accept, or even if they want to accept the paradigm.

Doing the experiment with your experimental chip design is the only way of producing knowledge(empirical) of the attributes for that design. But i think this is already being done, to as great an extent as researchers can apprehend it, either by linking "electronic" chips to biological brain material, or designing convoluted parallel processing designs. These systems are still being explored, but already are providing solutions to real processing problems like robotic vision systems etc.

Dave, I agree I was using intelligence in a non-standard way. On the human level we tend to think of the concious mind as "intellectual" and the sub-concious as reactive. I tend to think of the concious as BS just putting into words what the sub-conscious already realized :) I'm weird.

Well if there's one thing we understand less than fundamental "particle" physics - it's how the mind works ;)

yes I for on think every cell that is living has some inherent quantum property's due to it's complex chemistry  (think amplification of stochastic chaos) these quantum property's add up to freewill in some organisms but also help guide evolution over long periods of time   

I think you look at it from the wrong angle. To discuss the brain, you hardly even need quantum physics. Of course, in the end they ARE involved in there but the brain rather works by diffusing signals. Diffusing is rather a thermodynamic thing. And thermodynamic effects are what destroy coherence which is necessary for quantum physics to apply.

Rather, you should think of it as how this whole system came about. The first neuron-like cells were pretty bad at their tasks. Likely, there wasn't even one unified standard right away. You can even see that in us, where certain rather muscle-like cells in our heart, not related to the nervous system, DO transmit electrical signals in a similar way. They aren't as fast as neurons but their advantage is that they are (even) more error-resistant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_conduction_system_of_the_heart
Neuronic structures basically evolved for sharing information between specialized regions. At the beginning it was an unstructured, fairly messy, diffuse mesh going fairly uniformly all over the place in a body - that's still the case in, say, jellyfish.
The system never was designed to be perfect right away. It was only meant to save your life.
It was capable of "telling" the body to AVOID THIS DIRECTION, PRETADOR AHEAD - now avoiding that direction is fairly easy. You just have to do some random movement where the net-momentum points in any direction but that one. Not much thought or control necessary.
Or YUM FOOD AHEAD - same deal.
Slowly, things became more structured and as a result, able to accomplish more complex tasks. Resources were used more efficiently which in turns allowed for more complex structures.

Very recently in evolution, humans happened. They evolved certain parts of the brain that give rise to functionalities far beyond what's been found in any other species (although findings keep showing up that suggest, that we aren't quite AS unique as we would have thought initially. Certain high-level cognitive tasks were managed to be pulled off by other mammals like whales, domesticated animals or other grand apes, as well as certain birds, especially crow-kinds and parrot-kinds and, as far as I know the only exception out of that field, squids.

Still, the main purpose of our brain is to make sure we survive. However, most survival tasks don't need complicated solutions. Some fairly simple, most of the time easy to accomplish constraints have to be posed: Find food, sleep a bit, avoid dangers, etc.
At some point, the brain got SO good at that, that suddenly a lot of sparetime allowed for more advanced abilities like becoming social (which in turn gave EVEN MORE survivability and as a result EVEN MORE spare tmie), having a culture (There are male birds of some species that apparently waste hours of their time just to decorate their nests. The most beautiful ones are picked for mating. - that this is even possible, proves that their basic brain is by now easily capable of giving a pretty solid chance for surviving the next day without all that much effort. It's neuronal luxury) and eventually forming deeper and deeper emotions aswell as giving more and more insights to the fundamentals of logics and information itself.

However, evolution is a very strict net-benefit calculator. If you improve a thing, you gotta do so inside the constraints of your resources. So ANY biological process is ALWAYS just improved up to a certain point. Unless a serious "technical" jump happens that allows to use your resources WAY more efficiently all of a sudden and thus makes you able to waste more of those resources on expensive luxury, certain features will reach an equilibrium.
This means that, as long as the system is fail-save enough, you don't need to get rid of all the errata. In fact, a bit of noise even is within the spirit of evolution. It gives rise for new ideas that cannot be considered by a purely deterministic system.
Also, if you tried to drive your inner wirings to absolute error-free perfection, (obviously I'm simplifying things here since you yourself can hardly change what was given to you) you would suddenly hit a resource wall. So you make sure, every single bit of information your neurons process is ALWAYS correct. There is no bitflips, no bit swaps, no noise.
But to get that, insane amounts of resources would have to be wasted to get there. It would simply not work. It's extremely uneconomic.

The very same deal is true for the DNA, by the way. Mutations happen on a fairly low rate. But the main reason they happen is that it would be too much evolutionary work to get the copies better. Make the DNA any better in its reproduction step and your offsprings will actually become weaker over time. Not because of faulty copies but rather because they can't cope with the evolutionary jumps, all other species are making in the mean time.
Making it more perfect than it currently is, kills you in the long run, as weird as that might seem.

As of applications to computing: Well, a lot of evolutionary algorithms, gradient descent algorithms or neuronal networks mimic evolution or thought process in various ways. That's the huge and exponentially expanding field of artifical intelligence. Big accomplishments are made in that field almost every day. Most of which you'll probably never even hear of.

Things you can consider watching. Those might not seem related but they actually are:
This playlist gives you an introduction to Economics: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAEA5E9ACA1508F92
Note, that evolution can be thought of as a highly economically motivated process. If you understand the concepts given in that playlist, you are likely to better understand evolution aswell.
But you don't even have to watch all those videos if they are too much. If you watch the first third or so, I think you should probably be seeing the connections. Though he doesn't ever mention these connections since he tries to teach other things in there.

This playlist is on human behavioral biology: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D
Those videos are longer but I'd really suggest you to watch them. They are really awesome and clearly show how a lot of things happened that define us now.

This is already done. It's obviously in the beginning of research but more and more successes are also made in THAT field.
Example from August '08:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/how-to-train-yo/

Well, if you look at the brain's structure, you'll find that the fractal organization actually keeps the average axion length very low. You have areas of minimal distance, neuronic regions that do exactly ONE task and then you have some longer connections that give rise to diffusive thinking across tasks.

Some qualitative statistics on that:
The average female has an a bit bigger global to local axion ratio than a male. That's the main explanation why they, on average, aren't as good at logics but often better at creativity. However, to be exact, both logics and creativity need both focused and diffusive thinking. Just the simplest incarnation of each tend to rely more heavily on one of the sides, respectively. Beyond simple tests, those differences become more and more vague.
Authistic people are found to have roughly the same amount of neurons as non-authistic ones. But this global to local axion ratio is significantly shorter. What you find is exaclty their behavior: The way more shorter connections allow them to have extreme focus on singular tasks. They can do those unexpectedly well. But they can't jump around with their thoughts nearly as much. Diffusive thinking is something they are very bad at.

This isn't entirely wrong. But it's actually the simples explanation that has hope of development. E.g. it should be falsifiable and it should predict things.
Also, I'd like to think of god or some related entity/entities not as an alternate concept but as an additional one. Current science mostly asks entirely different questions than theology. The fields are mostly unrelated.
It's true, that quantum physics and the theory of relativity have implications that go so much beyond what we would have thought, that it's quite charming to think of all the beautiful equations as "set in stone" by some higher being.
However, that those theories REQUIRE such an entity is far from reality. Though, to make that clear, NOR do those theories REQUIRE that there is no such entity.

This is exactly what it's all about. Nice.

Since recently, the higgs was found, I got a lot more insight on that by all those nice videos that started popping up on YT. I especially recomment watching the three video series from Minute Physics on that topic. (Or at least the two of three videos that are currently availabe)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Uh5mTxRQcg&hd=1
As you'll see in video two (you get there from video one), mass is basically happening, at least on a mathematical, quantum physical level, because those particles bounce around a lot in the higgs field. And the reason it was so difficult to seprate the higgs boson (if what they found actually is that), is because that boson itself interacts so strongly with the field. You have to excite the field to quite high amounts (at least high for particle physics - on human world levels, that value still is tiny) to seperate this particle.

Of course, a lot of it IS thought experiments. But thought experiments, supported by data from actual PHYSICAL experiments. A lot of data.
The part where we still are entirely in a thought-experiment realm is called string-theory, m-theory, supergravity, etc. - A lot of theories with similar basic ideas, some of which more general than others. (Of the given examples, M-theory is the most generic one because it contains all five flavors of string-theory and supergravity)
THERE we do not yet have any evidence. Mostly because it's really difficult to think of experiments that can be done on earth or in space that is close to earth.
Most thought experiments on that sector involve black holes or other circumstances we can simply not rely on when being anywhere near earth.
However, I've recently seen a paper somewhere that suggested an experiment that is actually executable on planet earth. Can't exactly recall what it was but in that case, if I recall, the main problem was a proper detector. Effects caused by string theory that are not predicted by the standard model or general relativity, are prone to be very weak in circumstances that can be achieved on earth. In fact directly here we can mostly validate quantum physics and special theory of relativity. General theory of relativity right now can only be shown by observing space. - However, apparently we already found quite usable evidence for the Lens-Thirring effect, a very weak relativistic effect in which a rotating massive body causes the space around it to twist a little, directly on the earth's surface.
So in short: As long as you don't go for unifying Quantummechanics and general relativistic mechanics (note, if you exclude gravity and just go for special relativity, such a unification IS possible), you are far away from realms that are merely "just thought experiments".

Nope.
The reason, evolution makes it seem that life appeared magically out of nothing is, that evolution makes a very basic assumption:
Given life, life will evolve.
You need life for evolution to happen.
A description of how life came to be is NOT included in theory of evolution.
Evolution is only telling you how life became what it is today.
The field that does tell you how life itself came to be is called abiogenesis. That field is by far not as well developed as evolution but there HAVE been results:
- The miller-urey experiment and variants of it clearly proved that it's possible for reasonably complex organic structures to be formed randomly. Such experiments have been executed for mere weeks but they model the early conditions of earth's atmosphere, etc.
In various different arrangements, all kinds of biologically used amino-acids have been formed, as well as a lot of unused ones.
The substances from the original miller-urey experiment are STILL meassured. As newer technologies emerge, we find more and more organic compounds that simply weren't noticable with previous technology because of lack of sensitivity or even lack of reactivity to the substance all together. Every year, more and more substances are found in the material that resulted from that one experiment. And that was a few weeks worth of experimentation. Scale it all up, give it way more space, way more time and probably additional physical catalysts (the original experiment considered electric charge. Other experiments used UV radiation or the forming of ice.), you can clearly see how early earth soon was quite a soup of organic materials that eventually turned into bubbly foam, storing materials, becomming progressively better at storing those materials, starting to encode properties, possibly via RNA or maybe some proto-DNA like TNA, and then kicked off evolution.

- Asteroids are huge chunks of ice. There are evidences that early earth was hit by quite a lot of those, giving the planet a lot of its valuable water resources.
Probes from Asteroid trails showed that those huge ice-blocks already contain a lot of organic materials of varying complexity on their own right. So probably, the delivery of organic materials via asteroids even accellerated things a bit.

I suggest you too, to watch those lectures on behavioral biology. Epigenetics is an important part of that.
What you said there isn't entirely wrong. In fact MOST of our DNA is Epigenetic structure. E.g. What actually encodes features is about, if I recall, 30% of the deal. Some stuff is viral DNA that we got immune against. That's another couple of %-points.
But mostly, human DNA - and most DNA of highly developed creatures for that matter, consists of what's basically switches and knobs, finetuning the workings of our DNA.
Epigenetics has nothing to say on mutation. Those structures are subject to mutation in a very similar way as Genetics themselves are.
What epigenetics do is, sometimes permanently, activate or deactivate a part of the DNA.
For instance, if you are pregnant and in the last third of pregnancy, suddenly getting almost no food is a very strong signal to the baby. It will start producing certain enzymes that plug in on very specific parts of the DNA. Those sections are controlling digestive systems and such. If this happens to you as an unborn, you tune your body to be as efficient as possible with digesting and to be VERY careful with spending resources. The results? You are much more likely to become obese or diabetic.
Epigenetics is also where the famous but usually misinterpreted grandmother effect kicks in: Epigenetic features are not given to the next generation by males. Sperm just can't carry that information. But females have some of the information stored in their eggs. Strong epigenetic effects caused by such sudden hunger periods (happened historically in, I think it was holland, during WWII) or by stress (those two are the ones that are best understood but there are numerous other ones and it's very much subject of ongoing research), such strong effects can be shown up to five generations after the initial cause. So that's the grandmother effect. Your great-great-grandmother along the female line could have an effect on how you are.
This isn't wrong but it's not epigenetics.
Also it's always a bit shaky to talk about choosing. There isn't much choice if the only thing you can do is following your instincts as adequately as your physical body allows you. A "healty" amoebea will either already be resistant against that poison, thus it's not poison for it at all, or it will move away. No actual choice involved.

It's already shown that some levels of cellular mechanics only work by assuming quantum physics. However, for the cell as a whole, most processes are accountable for with classical physics and thermodynamics.
It's all a matter of how closely you're trying to look. Living cells usually are still too big to rely on quantum mechanics. So they are unlikely to get advantages out of those processes.
However, never say never. Weirder things have happened.

Wherefrom then, and how, does "our" brain seek ways purposed to ensure survival?
What is "survival"?

Not sure it should be inserted here, but (at least in other areas of the forums) I've also often seen reference to the well known proposition "I think therefore I am.".  

Consider a "thought experiment", those who ponder the proposition "I think therefore I am":
"I am not".

Fred

Ok, I'm done with that long, LONG post. I hope I have covered all that I noticed upon catching up on this thread.

Apophyster: I'm not entirely sure if I entirely understand what you are trying to say but:
The brain never searched for purposes of surviving. Not explicitly at least.
Of course, a lot of philosophers, biologists, mathematicians, informatitans and bionic researchers have thought a lot of a purpose for this all. And probably theologists too.
But on the explicit level of "everyone", no such purpose is looked for. Seeking purpose in anything already is a result of the luxury of having a brain like ours... or having a society that was built by many, many such brains.
Humanity has reached a point where, if you look globaly, for the WHOLE species, there is only one threat left. And that is humanity itself.

I think therefore I am... Not quite sure how that fits in here right now. Descartes raised quite a valid point that the only thing he knows for sure is that he thinks. Although, if you try to go to such metaphysical, strongly overquoted and often misinterpreted matters, it's easy to say "what if even the very thought process of myself is an illusion and I don't even really think at all?"

But I have the feeling that is even more off-topic than the thread had gone anyway.

> However, that those theories REQUIRE such an entity is far from reality. Though, to make that clear, NOR do those theories REQUIRE that there is no such entity.

The latter part of that is arguable if talking about the whole of existence since such an entity is itself part of existence...i.e. the unanswerable question "Where did God come from then ?" or "Who created God ?".

For anyone into sci-fi who'd like to read a good book loosely related to this thread try the "World of Tiers" series by Philip Jose Farmer or "Time enough for love" by Robert Heinlein.

This is correct. It's not scientifically answerable. Which is part of the reason why I'd rather keep these subjects apart.

I'm trying to not bounce off too many walls.  My apologies for the ot diversion.
@kram1032: I struggled to find a better word than "purposed", maybe it's "reached".
If I may add, I tend to ignore discussions about brain since it's our mind that *we* use and are familiar with.
And I ain't got no business at all talkin' philosophy.  :tongue1:

@David M.: I liked also "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and before that "Stranger in s Strange Land".
I totally admire all your fractal work as well.
I think I shall retired before the last wall I try to bounce from cracks my skull and I shall no longer have to worry over brains, minds, thoughts, mentations, ideations, cognitions, and the various other troubling matters that occur between my ears.

Fred E

But I didn't have troubles with the word "purposed" - it rather was the word "seek" that didn't work well here...

Good survey kram, of the empirical  basis of our knowledge so far. The paradigm one uses is crucial to the explanatory platform one uses. Thus my use of the fractal principles to frame these Questions. and to organise   the empirical data. The models then constructed have some sympathy with any individual experience. The search for elegance becomes understandable, as does the complexity.

Your last post shows the futility of words, for semantics leads to that feeling, where shared experience allows us to pull together.

Hmmm..
Calling words useless seems a bit far of a stretch.
That we even have words is one of the most important reasons for a medium like the one we're using right now, to even exist.
Written language isn't always sufficient to give away emotions and such but it's excellent for delivering core information of statments from one end to another.
However, if what you were trying to say is that words can be misinterpreted so easily then, yes, that's entirely true.

Having a scalefree view of the world is imensely powerful. It's the paradigm I choose to frame most of my perceived world in aswell. There almost is no point in life where it simply doesn't apply and usually, when it does not, it's simply because you lack some particular information that obviously links a situation to a way broader set of situations.

However, how about we try to come back to the actual topic. Or is everything said and done for that already?
Fractal CPU - refering to the imperfections of our brain.
I was pointing out that those imperfections are a result of two things:
- it's "too hard" as in it takes too many additional resources to make the process more accurate
- a certain level of inaccuracy can actually be benefical for survival in that it spawns creativity and new ideas.

Also I was pointing you to a couple of resources of which I'd especially recommend one:
Human Behavioural Biology - lectured on Stanford University.
It covers many patterns of human behavior on all scales: That professor organizes his lectures like that: He starts with what happens "right before" you behave in a certain way, e.g. a certain signal arives at a certain part of the brain, then he goes back in time further and furter, usually covering how that behavior depended on your life when your mother was pregnant with you - this is, where epigenetics strongly comes in - and finally he goes all the way back to how it happened in evolution.

By doing this overview, he is really amazing at giving you the whole, scale-free picture.

Yes, very good.
I value some words personally for their role in my knowledge accessing structures. Some other words i have to create myself to access the insight i have. But words are tools for personal use more than for communication. It is by shared experience that we may use words to communicate.
Scale free is nice, but having worked so hard to reintroduce the fractal paradigm, i pesonally am not willing to move away from the word fractal, even though the word may move away from me!
Your succinct summary of your long post is wonderful for moving back to the thread topic. I will reread it again with these directions in mind! ;D

Really, the difference between scalefree and fractal is mostly the difference between continuous and discrete.
For instance, in the Koch kurve won't look qualitiatively entirely the same if you don't zoom in at least to a certain level
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Kochsim.gif)
But a Wiener-process, actually looking very similar to that (Wiener-processes are a generic concept of which, for instance, brownian motion is a part) will look much smoother while zooming in. There is no visible step-size for repetitions to occur.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Wiener_process_animated.gif)
The difference is quite subtle but it's there.
However, since it's so subtle, you can almost use those terms interchangably.

So Lar sayst current computers try to avoid error causing structures, but the biological brain does not. Lar then reveals that his religious choice is rompting tis thread, and that what i have called the biological brain has an intelligent design brief, basically to accumulate useful knowledge about what seems a random world of swirling chaotic events.
He then presupposes that god is the simplest answer to any problem or question and that the human /biological brain will arrive at this conclusion.

He then states yjat theoretically a computer ith a fractal chip design should come to the same conclusion.
He then asks for a discussion on his Belief which he has put in a hypothetical form, and thus called a theory. The questionseems to be, build these systems and test if my hypothesis is correct? Which is not a question but a recruitment of fellow thinkers.

Kram comes along with the current scientific and evolutionary based, still forming consensus view , basically letting us know that there is some real empirical research evidence and speculation we can imbibe before or while we discuss lar2's theory, Basically if we want a proper and philosophical discussion on this topic of the biological brain lets all start on the same page!

lar2's thread is not based on deep empirical data, but on deep and resilient faith. A discussion may proceed if the parties declare their aims.

The reason i joined the thread was because i just had another thought about how the biological brain and the electromechanical processing chip would be virtually identical could the chip be fractalised to the same extent. I do not see the need to include or exclude god or gods in this. Kram however alludes to a powerful systematic connectedness in every human process through the fractal biological structure, which is itself completely explicable by fractal, generative, iterative processes such as evolution. i am in sympathy with that view and systematic explanatory force, but again do not see the need to exclude or include gods in the discussion.
For if you believe god or gods have done this , then you should marvel at your gods; or if you believe evolutionary processes have done this then you should marvel at their fractal patterns; and so on.

However, if it is your intention to convert one believer to your belief, then declare it. Otherwise let us have sensible discussion and speculations about the empirical data as far as we know it.

If i have not fairly stated your views please correct me. ;D

Hmm, this is a very interesting way to put it all. To summarize your summary, you agree with me on rather looking at it from an iterative point of view aswell as that you feel, discussing this doesn't require (as in prove or disprove) any form of higher entitiy/-ies.
That seems correct to me. I think, you captured quite well my take on the topic.

However, I have the feeling that you didn't capture Lar's take on it quite as well. I can't quite put my finger on the reason for that though. Most of it seems correct but *something* seems off. Maybe it's the conversion thing. I don't think, he tries to force anyone into any kinds of opinions.
But we'll see. Hopefully, Lar will, as you put it, "declare his aims". :)

I'd like to add that many physicists and mathematicians nowadays are astonished or blown away by how simple, beautiful, elegant many complex phenomenas' descriptions wind up to be and some of them will tell you that it's hard to NOT believe in some kind of higher beeing's plan when these solutions emerge.

I've even seen a t-shirt somewhere stating:
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yM3ZteDD_tI/TkSiLW4kvwI/AAAAAAAAAiU/g4zZc3aUDHk/s1600/and_god_said_maxwells_equations_tshirt-p235628270699537542q6vb_400.jpg)
Because those four simple equations essentially define all there is to say about electromagnetism and offsprings such as optics.

The tee shirt says what i tried to express succinctly. The  bigger sentence contains the equations. We can just discuss the equations, and leave the larger frame to individual choice.

I not only think a fractal processor would mimic human signal experience in the brain, even more so if electrolytes can be involved, but other biological brains are similar to the human signal experience. Animates differ by degree not by quality of processing.:star:

There indeed are only very few differences between our brains and those of fruit-flies, if we're constraining our scope to the building plans of the invovled neurons.
The main differences are that our brains are significantly more sectioned and more voluminous.
As I *think* I already have mentioned, this sectioning goes into an extreme in authistic people. That clearly shows how significant this sectioning is to behavior. Authistic people are often extremely adept logicians, so they are, in a way, much more like a computer than the average person.
But they have a very hard time living. They loose a lot of their emotional capabilities (that doesn't mean they are unable to express any kinds of emotions but it sure becomes a lot harder for them) and in fact, to even understand an opposing individual's emotions, they have to focus quite a bit and really think about what the external body language tells them about it. (I'm pretty sure though, as always, there isn't a pure black and white - how much this is the case certainly depends on the Individual) - there are no implicit clues they are picking up, or almost none. They essentially have to learn about emotions like a computer might be able to with a machine-learning algorithm. (That being said, they are still a lot better in that than any computer nowadays could be)

This simple example should show quite clearly, why it's not a good idea to have perfect logics in a brain. It comes with a penality of error-robustness and general survivability.
In fact, the most important part of our brain, subject to survival, is also the most primitive one: The stem-brain is almost exactly like it already existed in reptiles. It encodes the most important aspects of survival, like running from pretadors, running towards prey, breathing, changing heart-frequency...
Have a damage there and you're pretty much dead.
Have a damage in your frontal cortex and you can't stick to any rules anymore - e.g. your social skills and your morale totally fail. Up to the point where you can entirely state a rule in a very precise and fully correct form but you can't for the love of whatever apply it.
BUT. You survive. (Until people get so mad at you that they execute you. But that's a different story)
There are excellent examples of this in that lecture about Human Behavioral Biology from Stanford University. I know I repeat myself but I really recommend you all to watch that. :)

I think more important than the structure of this computer is how is receives information. Ours uses the senses, or experience. How would this computer experience? User inputs, algorithms? How exactly does our brain store experience? If it is indeed an iterative structure, would if form itself? These are essential questions.

Ah, you undug THIS topic again. Nice and timely, because I have found something related:
Check out numenta grok.
It seems to have entered commercial phase recently, but it's essentially an implementation of a so called "HTM"-network - a Hierarchical temporal memory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_temporal_memory).
The inventor of them gave a google tech talk (and various other talks but they all are fairly similar and just vary in length and detail)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4y43qwS8fl4

It's essentially mimicing as closely as possible by means of a computer, a small region of the neo-cortex - notably, pretty much ANY small region of it, because, as it turns out, it's roughly the same everywhere.

This is the closest to a fast implementation of a biological brain we've ever had.
(There are really slow implementations that do model way more details, but they simply aren't feasible for actual realtime work)
They are still working on improving this, modelling more details, but this is essentially as close as we are.

He also gives great insight of how the brain's memory and information processing works.
Check out the talk and if you want *slightly* different angles on it, search for more of them.

There also is an open implementation here:
http://sourceforge.net/p/openhtm/wiki/Home/
It's in C# and thus only works on Windows so far, but there is a guy who tries to port it to C, I think, with the goal of being multiplatform in mind.

Goodness, I need to look at my post replies more often.  I thought this thread had been unraveled a long time ago.  I assure you that, reading this discussion, I do thoroughly regret mentioning God.  I should have realized everyone on this forum has wide ranging beliefs on that highly sensitive subject.  My point is: our brains, and any animalian brain, for that matter, succeed where man-made computers largely fail.  The brain has many qualities that make it unique, my question is which of these qualities should we imitate if we wish to build computers with similar capabilities.  Obviously one could just culture brain cells inside the cpu. That has actually been tried.  But few people can afford to keep a normal computer running, let alone a biological one.  I wanted to know what quality you could imitate most cost effectively to produce the same or similar results.

@kram1032:  Love the T-shirt.  If any one on this forum thinks I really believe God stepped out of wherever he lives and said, in English, "Let there be light!" or in any other human language for that matter, I find it no wonder he finds my beliefs ludicrous.

No harm in mentioning your believes. I personally try to be as generic and inclusive as possible to not step on anyone else's toes. (Note that nothing I said in this thread gave any details on my own believes concerning any deity. I merely pointed out that such an entity is neither required nor contradicted by any of the so far discovered laws of nature.) Still, I don't think, anybody here will think more or less of you because of your religious believes.

Though, the Google Tech Talk I linked above is pretty much exactly the answer to your question. It's the current state of the art of real-time-simulating a mind on the computer. (The blue brain / human brain - project simulates an entire brain, not only the neo-cortex, and with a lot more details, but it's also WAY slower)
Hierarchical Temporal Memories, as of now, can already use memory in the same way our brains do it and can form predictions from it as well as tell you, how surprising a pattern is (e.g. how far away from previously learned events it is)
Some mechanics, though, are still missing from it. For instance, this network can't yet focus its attention on anything. It's essentially always spread over the entire mind. It can't guess, what is important and what not, and thus isn't as efficient as the brain would be.

This system of reasoning and predicting already is highly fractal and, even better, could almost certainly be implemented "hard-coded" on today's hardware. - E.g. you could make it into a "fractal CPU"

It amazes me that some have been so mistreated for their convictions in public forums that they feel they must apologise! We have a right to appropriate free speech on this forum, but no right to convert others to our point of view.

That being accepted , why can we all not just "get along?".

The electromechanical models or electronic models of brain function are a testament to our fractal nature, especially in that by understanding a part we can feel our way towards a much greater constructed system. Already on many fronts such systems would seemingly surpass our ability, but when you add in the complexity of what we do unconsciously you may realise that it would take all that "speed" to emulate the thinking of say a queen bee or maybe some small social animate.

This is of course neglecting the full on fundamantal proprioceptive role our unconscious provides.

A fractal cpu is a model that helps me understand how it all possibly works, but does not escape from being just a model.