The Drabblecast

Well, I certainly agree that today's computers do not fit the bill as far as matching the complexity of the parallel processing power of the human brain. Let's stipulate a hypothetical silicon brain, designed on parallel processing structures of equal computational power to the wet-ware of our organic brains. (hey, this is a SF site, after all...)

Given that Apples to Apples comparison (regarding level of complexity) does the organic brain now have any inherent advantage in self-awareness potential to the silicon brain?

Squirrels survive at least as well as humans, and with much less intelligence. Granted an animal with squirrel-level problem solving, where's the impetus to get smarter? Put another way, all the apes that stayed dumb also survived the big cats. We've still got those adorable little spider monkeys, after all. Obviously, there are much simpler, less engineering-intensive ways to beat a big cat that to develop a giant abstract-thinking brain. Evolution has no ambition: It's not going to find an hard solution when an easy one is available.

As to wet vs dry brains, I don't think there's any basis to say one is better than the other, because we really haven't got a flippin' clue how intelligence works. I always read these cute little articles about how scientists found that such and such a part of the brain is active when someone is imagining or remembering, and how that's some kind of big discovery. That's like looking at a computer and saying "This part gets hot when it's making pictures," and thinking that tells you anything about how the computer works. Brains are magic: We understand the broad outlines of what they do and we understand how they work just enough that we can give them rough shoves in certain directions. But we don't really know how the magic works.

Wet or dry? Who can know? I'm inclined to think it doesn't matter, but it's just a feeling.

Mr. Tweedy wrote:Wet or dry? Who can know? I'm inclined to think it doesn't matter, but it's just a feeling.

Well, of course in this context to say that something matters is purely subjective. Odds are we won't survive the heat death of the universe anyway.

Willie the Shake put it all in perspective so very nicely when he wrote:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
creeps in this petty pace from day to day
to the last syllable of recorded time,
and all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more: it is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.

ROU Killing Time wrote:Well, I certainly agree that today's computers do not fit the bill as far as matching the complexity of the parallel processing power of the human brain. Let's stipulate a hypothetical silicon brain, designed on parallel processing structures of equal computational power to the wet-ware of our organic brains. (hey, this is a SF site, after all...)

Given that Apples to Apples comparison (regarding level of complexity) does the organic brain now have any inherent advantage in self-awareness potential to the silicon brain?

I guess that one would be very hard to call without a lot of specifics. Let's face it, our wetware has a great many shortcomings. It's essentially been engineered by chance. So one would think that a properly engineered artificial brain would have a lot of advantages. The big mystery is whether or not it would be truly conscious.

Personally my money is on humanity borgifying. It will start with direct neural connections to the internet. Then we will start cross connecting and that will be the end of our species as we know it now. Might be an improvement. I'm guessing that the mega-churches will be the first go Borg.

still catching up on back-issues of Dc....

I liked this one, though not because it was the most thrilling plot or the most original idea. Hmm... that's not quite fair i suppose; it was certainly the first virtual 'old-folks home' type community for ghosts I had ever heard of... Though the core ideas I feel as if I've discussed before, whether it was in a class of people or while talking to myself. Regardless, I've always been partial to the question of a 'self', or a sense of a soul, or what makes up 'me.' What ever you call it there tends to never be a week where i don't consider this question for some period of time. This week the thought was brought up by this episode of the DC and for that it gets a wholehearted golf clap.

Hmmmm... Now one qualm or question rather that i found with this story. If what is going into this community of disembodied ghosts is a backup of the persons mind, wouldn't that be only a copy of that persons mind, and not the original? That is to say that when people go to talk to that persons ghost their not really talking to that person, its only a copy of that person. This thought kinda rubbed me the wrong way. It spoke to me of the sometimes inability to let go of people after they die. The program that allows your collective mind to live on seemed like it was more for the people left behind than for the person that dies. It kinda reminds me of a part in the Ender's Series i read awhile ago by Orson Scott Card (towards the end where a copy of Ender's brother Peter is created from memories of him stored up in Ender's mind... As much as he looked, talked and acted like Peter he was not Peter. Peter was long dead and this was just a copy and reacted based on how the original Peter had acted in his life).

...and i apologize if any of this has been covered already.. i didn't really have time to read though the whole thread...