Whoa, Dude, Are We Inside a Computer Right Now?
Unless you believe there’s something magical about consciousness—and I don’t, I believe it’s the product of a very sophisticated architecture within the human brain—then you have to assume that at some point it can be simulated by a computer, or in other words, replicated. There are two ways one might accomplish an artificial human brain in the future. One of them is to reverse-engineer it, but I think it would be far easier to evolve a circuit or architecture that could become conscious. Perhaps in the next ten to 30 years we’ll be able to incorporate artificial consciousness into our machines.
Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong
The newborn infant is confronted with massive noise, what William James called “a blooming, buzzing confusion,” just a mess. If say, an ape or a kitten or a bird or whatever is presented with that noise, that’s where it ends. However, the human infants, somehow, instantaneously and reflexively, picks out of the noise some scattered subpart which is language-related. That’s the first step. Well, how is it doing that? It’s not doing it by statistical analysis, because the ape can do roughly the same probabilistic analysis. It’s looking for particular things. So psycholinguists, neurolinguists, and others are trying to discover the particular parts of the computational system and of the neurophysiology that are somehow tuned to particular aspects of the environment. Well, it turns out that there actually are neural circuits which are reacting to particular kinds of rhythm, which happen to show up in language, like syllable length and so on. And there’s some evidence that that’s one of the first things that the infant brain is seeking — rhythmic structures.
“ Would you win the hearts of others, you must not seem to vie with them, but to admire them. Give them every opportunity of displaying their own qualifications, and when you have indulged their vanity, they will praise you in turn and prefer you above others…Such is the vanity of mankind that minding what others say is a much surer way of pleasing them than talking well ourselves.”
Benjamin Franklin
Found in Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Five Experts at Frieze Art Fair London 2012
Interesting to see how the different experts interprets and sheds new light to some of the key works at this years Frieze Art Fair in London.
Eric Kandel on Psychoanalysis, Art and Biology
Vienna is relatively small. And it had wonderful salons, opportunities for people to get together. There was a lot of interaction between scientists and non-scientists, between Jews and non-Jews, between artists, writers and scientists, including medical scientists.
Eric Kandel on why Vienna was the place to be around 1900. The intermingling of people, professions, skills and mind led to revolutionary breakthroughs in psychology, brain science, literature, and art.
“ Love only what falls to your lot and is destined for you; what is more suited to you than that?”
“ Is it change that a man fears? Why, what can have come to be without change, and what is dearer or more familiar to Universal Nature? Can you yourself take your bath, unless the firewood changes? Can you be nourished, unless what you eat changes? Can any other service be accomplished without change? Do you not see that it is precisely your changing which is similar, and similarly necessary to Universal Nature?”
Slow knowledge
The acquiring of knowledge and insights has been occupying my mind lately. More and more information and knowledge tends to be served in snackable portions, short texts, videos or talks. Online you can gobble up the latest TEDtalk while eating lunch, read a blogpost about the latest revolution or something, check some facts on Wikipedia and so on. We are overwhelmed by information and knowledge to acquire. We’re constantly at the drive in of the fast food joint of knowledge.
You can cram a book into a nice 10 minute animation which serve all the insights and ideas the book has to offer, but what it cant emulate is the slowly consumption book reading is. Spending time with the ideas of other, greater, minds and adding your biases and knowledge to the the mix. Committing and investing a great time of thinking about a subject.
For me thats whats make reading books so unique and special. It lets me deeply explore topics, ideas and thoughts through the minds of other. Slowly building my own insights and opinions.
