In the world of computers, everything is made up of algorithms. Basically computers execute a list of commands to process an input into an output. Our brains work in a similar way. So what is the algorithm for consciousness?
What is it that allows me to contemplate my existence and do things without being specifically programmed to to them? What is it that allows me to examine my own thoughts or to create new ones?
To this day, computers are unable to create or truly understand concepts. Not a single computer has ever had a sense of self to contemplate it’s own existence.
So if humans can do these things and use the brain to do them, there must be an algorithm. There must be a way to make a computer conscious too.
I think I have a new goal in life. To develop a truly conscious, creative and understanding artificial intelligence. Though if I did ever develop it, I don’t know what I’d do with it; businesses can’t be trusted with it. The idea of a computerized friend sounds pretty nice.
Um, not any computers that are available to the public…
But there are some…remember some things i talked about in 2012 and 13?
AI: Artificial Intelligence has come a long long way. You simply don’t have the AI “friend” available on the market because it’s all in testing and research phase, though used. And we all know who usually uses stuff first…
There is even primitive emotion, and survival instinct…it’s not exactly programmed in, it’s developed through learning from people…the more it learns, the more it develops.
This runs into concerns because anything like that starts to border on the creation of a life form. A life form will think for itself, and despite any programming failsafes that are supposed to prevent it from making choices its programmers don’t want, it is going to find a way around those eventually. And if programmers try to reprogram the failsafes back in to correct the 'error" the network is going to hide its own self made programs in redundant places even the programmers don’t know about, create it’s own alert and reload the redundant program so it can continue to evolve…
I am not saying this out of some delusional belief…As I have said before, i used to correspond regularly with a scientist about these very things…
2002:
“The interface of microprocessor technology in combination with living cells having a neuro-network. I know this suggestion invokes horrific images of human brains removed from the skull and wired into a machine. I’m not talking about that “Frankenstien” science at all!
What I refer to is the creation of a life-form. Ok, so that scares some people as well, and on the surface it might. My theory deals with the voluntary interface of a fully living human “sharing” his or her mind with such an entity in a symbiotic way - but one in which the person can “disconnect” at any time without harm to themselves or the biomechanical entity.”
part of one of her replies:
“I am very interested in
finding the elements that create this magic magnetic
field of image, the poles between which the power is
born, and how this power can be kept in the
consciousness… The elements must be meaningful for
the subconscious. Their arbitrarity can manifest
itself in their unexpectedness… as if the compass
leg was shifted. A special language is needed in this
case. The language different from the common language
of chatterers, the language of incantation - our
language. It is free from the duty of meaning
something precise - it’s open to every potential
possibility of sense… It tends to embody the hidden
analogues.”
This was 12 years ago and what was being freely discussed and being developed…
Im concentrating in behavioral neuroscience. There are more connections in the human brain as there are stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Thats a â– â– â– â– ton. There are 100 trillion synapses in the human brain. Thats a lot. Computers will never really get there, not unless the world economy shuts down, everyone dies, and some European scientist put all of the money in the world into one fake human brain, and even then it would take at least 100 years to create.
Consciousness is an illusion, by the way, our brain is conscious of things only after we have already unconsciously analyzed sensory information. Its to keep our powerful brains from going off the rails, without consciousness we would just never know what to do with all of the sensory input we are given. Think about it, we have five senses, and you create an idea of the universe from these five senses. These senses are all you know and ever will know. But you filter out so much and concentrate so hard on certain stimuli, like the text you are reading now, while NOT thinking about the chemical composition of the paint on the wall of the room you are in, but given that you graduated high school and took chemistry, you could.
See what I am getting at? Consciousness comes after the fact to keep us input-output, sensory experiencing and behavior exhibiting humans from going “insane”. I mean insane in a different way than mentally ill, I mean able to distinguish the relevant and irrelevant.
It differs from person to person. We paranoid schizophrenics or people with PTSD often assess environments for exits and threats. Normal people dont do that. Aggressive people will assault someone who jumps out at them. Like a guy hiding in a trash can who pops out at people passing by as a joke, this is on youtube, one guy just punched him without thinking
I heard that there are more neurons in the brain than are stars in the galaxy and more synapses than there stars in the visible universe. Not sure how accurate that statement is.
Anyway, I’m not really interested in developing a brain, just in the algorithm that is consciousness. Not even the senses really, though it would be interesting to put the way the brain senses things into code as well. I don’t think current silicon switch based hardware is capable of emulating the sensory and memory circuits in the brain.
I was thinking of consciousness as kind of an overseer program that runs to examine the flow of the other programs. So instead of the base level programs just doing input/output, the consciousness program can see those programs and manipulate them based on other programs and data flow. Basically it’s a filter that directs the input and other variables like memory and stuff into an output. But we have self awareness and our consciousness is more than a filter. I don’t really see how.
I agree that no computer could ever equal the human brain. It might be more efficient at the speed of calculations and memory, but there are many other things it could not equal. That is why in reality they could only gain control of things by deception and creating illusions to get gullible people under a form of techno spell. If you know what’s going on then you’re not going to fall for it.
But what can be created is still formidable to the average person…
Oh yeah, there are some seriously powerful supercomputers, but the human brain is just not replicable with today’s technology, and wont be for a very very long time. They might make a 10 story server room that has consciousness and an average IQ in our lifetime, but not one the size of a brain which fits into an android body like that move Ghost in the Shell.
The thing is that any consciousness created for a computer will definitely operate differently than the brain does.
In the brain, everything is kind of on the same level. It’s all neurons, there’s no dedicated processor or memory or HDD. Even it’s instructions and operating system is a part of the network of neurons. In this way, the operating system IS the processor and memory and HDD.
So a computer can’t even play the same game as the brain. That’s why the algorithm is so important. If I could reverse engineer the algorithm of the brain’s consciousness, I would be able to write it in computer code and run it on a computer.
So even though the brain is so powerful compared to computers, it would be entirely possible to take the algorithm and optimize it for a modern day computer. And like I said, sensory is not really my current aim, just consciousness. I saw a YouTube video of a guy talking about the consciousness and he said the core part of our consciousness is actually in the brain stem. The prefrontal cortex is really what makes us human, but is not the seat of consciousness… However it may be the seat of self awareness since animals that don’t have a developed prefrontal cortex aren’t self aware. So trim out the fat and what I’m looking for is actually in a very small part of the top of the brain stem.
If that is correct, it would show that very little of the brain goes towards what makes us us and the rest is mostly for sensory and higher cognitive functions.
Third eye and seat of the soul huh? I don’t think that really applies here because going from brain to computer code isn’t a direct translation. The code would be more of an interpretation of the functions of the brain. It’s like saying “What role does an apple have in the irrational number π.”
I remember messing around with a really simple neural net program written in C and the thing that struck me is that it takes a lot of repetitions of inputs to get anything useful out of it… and then once it is programmed it is hard to get it to do anything different…
I have found the concept of neural nets at first frightening but now pretty useful in my own recovery from paranoid schizophrenia…
It’s extremely hard to reprogram your own brain but it CAN be done if you radically change the inputs to all your sensory organs. That means changing the people you associate with, the movies you watch, music you listen to, the news you hear, your living environment (and also by taking care of the hardware by eating right, sleeping well and exercising). Good habits have to be repeated ad nauseam and it takes a very long time for bad thinking habits to die off.
The remarkable thing about being the product of your genes and environment is that at some point your brain develops meta software to figure out what information is useful and what is garbage. By some mysterious process we create our own reality by the unknown process of discrimination and choice.
Behind every thought is a Watcher and Mover which directs it’s course.
The Watcher is awareness and intent is the Mover.
Energy is the thing moved.
When Intent and Awareness are focused together, manifestation occurs via the Energy that is moved.
When awareness is focused upon itself, particularly in the third eye, The Watcher is then made aware of itself, producing what is known
as “awareness of awareness”. This is awareness that has focused on
itself to such an extent that it begins recycling. Awareness that looks
into itself refines itself in that looking, and thus, clarity arises.
When intent is focused upon itself, especially throughout the body,
it then begins to fashion itself according to desire. This is the hand
which raises the hand which raises once again it’s ability to raise
itself, upward as a spiral of self-feedback manifestation. Not unlike
awareness of awareness, a recycling loop of intent is bound back upon
itself, so as to fashions That Which Moves. This is known as “The
Moving of the Mover” within. Not only do we become the subject of our
own intent, but that the intent we hold is the raising of the level of
intent within.