Re: Jeff Hawkins Q&A


Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
> "feedbackdroids" <feedbackdroids@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1130253445.374425.220800@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Hi Dan, yes, these things go around in the same loops forever, so it
> > > seems. Already for millenia it is conscious experience, the mind
> > > whatever thou callthesth it, that makes people's minds run around
> > > frantically forever - laymen, scientists and serious philosophers alike,
> > > up to this date! So BOYYY..that's interesting isn't it.. Even someone
> > > who personally doesn't have a eyebrow raising problem with conscious
> > > experience..might think what the *** is goin' on there..and try help
> > > the confused crowd out.
> > >
> > > kr jan
> >
> >
> > :):). The philosophers here are the ones I really find weird. They make
> > up these funny mind games to convince themselves they cannot really
> > know anything at all, but then when they go out into the real world,
> > you can bet they look both ways before crossing the street, just like
> > their (non-philosopher) mothers taught them. Mind games and made-up
> > stories end at the curbside. You wanna bet?
>
> So you're basing your knowledge that your senses on accurate on the
> testimony of your mother? Interesting.
>


Not my mother, your mother. I'm basing the fact that you survived long
enuf to be here to argue at all, on the idea that your mother taught
you correctly when you were a little tyke. 2 days ago I saw a 2-YO run
in front of a bus, and his mother grabbed him just in time. She
obvously had more sense than him.



> We can doubt that our senses are giving us an accurate representation of the
> world and still do that simply by noting that in our experience not looking
> both ways can lead to bad consequences, and we are unwilling to take that
> chance. That does not mean that we blindly trust the senses should they
> seem to report reality as being wrong, or that we don't look for ways to
> improve our view of what reality is.
>
> >
> > I just recalled a few minutes ago an experience I had many years ago.
> > Almost as vivid as when it happened, and it occurred to me to wonder -
> > where do these guys think these memories are stored? In some parallel
> > universe of cosmic consciousness? On a virtual hard disk sitting in
> > some castle in the sky? Accessible when the complexity of the brain
> > reaches some threshold value? I wonder whether dogs and cats have their
> > own little castles too?
>
> Since you seem to be aiming this at the theory I called ridiculous, let me
> point out that the question isn't where WE think memories are stored but
> where YOU think memories are stored. If you claim that memories are stored
> in the brain, an adherent of my "ridiculous" theory can do the same thing.
> A Cartesian dualist can do the same thing. After all, we all know from
> computers that we have RAM (consciousness) and the hard drive (the brain).
> Surely it wouldn't be a stretch to upload something across the bus to the
> RAM from the hard drive, right? And why do we normally write things to disk
> in a computer anyway?
>


The difference between made-up stories and science is that science
works on the basis of evidence, and doesn't have to try and disprove
every made-up ***'n'bull story for which there is no evidence. While
you guys spin and ponder whether we can ever know anything at all,
science and technology is making even your life better every day. If
all of the scientisits spent their time spinning made-up stories
instead of investigating nature, we'd still be in the dark ages. If you
don't believe this, burn your computer and shut off your phone service.
And wait 3 days.



> So where does your "complexity of the brain" model locate memory?


I presume most neuroscientists hold that memories are stored in
modifiable synapses and new connections between neurons, based upon
many years of scientific evidence. And this will hold until someone
discovers evidence to indicate this idea is wrong. At which point it
will be revised.

Complexity theory is way of studying and describing organizational
principles that result in large systems from the interaction of many
component elements, characterized by nonlinearities and feedback.

.

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