Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: hcobb@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Henry J. Cobb) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Brain as Database Message-ID: Date: 15 Mar 90 21:39:39 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 88 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu One way to look at the problem of "What does it mean to have a Good copy of my brain?" Is to consider the Brain as a database machine. Under this analogy experience is the data, and personality is the 'method' used to index into the database. But experience is not stored as 'flat text', but rather as part of the program. The method we use to 'store' ourselves is very effcient, but is slow to add new data and subject to losing references. (I.e. all the things you 'know' but cannot recall. ) A literal copy of the brain would run, but at no real improvement. The 'clock' could be upped, but this would be just like having more time to think. The system could also suffer from headaches, bad moods, etc... just like us. The obvious first thing to do would be to add more data directly to the database. This would imply that we could do the same thing in the organic system, and tends to imply that we are therefore 'smarter than ourselves' and this leads to paradox. So you could give your pet brain an extended storage of "flat data" to read, but unless it is clocked much higher than we are it is difficult to see how such a system would faster than you with a terminal. Lastly we might work on "tightening the code". But if you force a change of thinking on the pet, how then is it still you. Also this implys that we can improve the brains we already have, by being smarter than ourselves. (See above) I conclude that no real advantage is to be gained from a "thinking machine", and that that it is best to just provide the ~5 billion people we already have with the tools and training to undertake whatever "thinking" needs be done. Henry J. Cobb hcobb@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu "I was not here; I did not say this." [Actually, a simple direct simulation could well avoid many problems in the headache-bad mood category (though not all). Migraines are thought to be caused by certain chemical imbalances, sinus headaches are due to direct physical causes, etc. Then there are optimizations to be done in the I/O processes. If, for example, we could provide a "flat database" which could be read without going through the eye:retina:edge-finding:character-shape recognition:visual-cortex:words:parsing:langauge-understanding process, but could be "poured" into memory directly, it would be like having memorized the Library of Congress. I can think of hundreds of ways to be "smarter than I am"--some of them are embarrassing since they show just how limited the human mind really is: Throw three or four pennies on a desk. Look at them: you don't need to count, you recognize their number directly. 5 or more you can't (actually, you can practice and do much better on 5 and 6, but much over 7 and you're done for no matter how hard you work on it). I'd like to be able to look at thousands of objects (this isn't much, there are almost 2k chars on a 24x80 crt screen) and know their number directly. How many chars was that? Multiply 24 and 80... Isn't it instantly obvious the answer is 1920? no? you can do it for 2x3! I can visualize simple machines and do a fair simulation: e.g., three gears, each meshed with the other two, are locked and can't move. Some people can't even see that if it's drawn on paper-- but that's just a small difference of degree. What I'm saying is that you could hook someone into an electronic library, CAD system, physics simulator, symbolic and numeric math programs, and on and on, without changing the kinds of things their minds do directly in the tiny, simple cases, but simply take the limits off. Look at this word: "prestidigitation". If you focus on the "dig" in the middle you can hardly see the beginning and end of the word. You don't notice how limited the actual functional part of your field of view is normally, but it is. If you stop to think just how much the power of our minds can be extended by the utterly primitive agency of pencil and paper, you'll realize just how wretched our native symbolic-level processing really is. --JoSH]