Xref: utzoo comp.ai:8263 sci.bio:4195 sci.psychology:3917 alt.cyberpunk:5415
Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!infinet!sena
From: sena@infinet.UUCP (Fred Sena)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.bio,sci.psychology,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: The Bandwidth of the Brain
Message-ID: <2750@infinet.UUCP>
Date: 21 Dec 90 21:18:54 GMT
References: <37034@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: sena@infinet.UUCP (Fred Sena)
Organization: Memotec, Inc.  North Andover, MA
Lines: 108

In article <37034@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:
>There is a common myth that the brain is capable of enormous computational
>bandwidth -- for example that the retina sends gigabauds worth of data to
>the brain.  I believe the computational bandwidth of the brain is quite low,
>low enough that we could simulate a brain on today's computers if only we knew
>how to do it.
>

(If anyone knows of books that relate to my response below, I would really
appreciate hearing about them.	thanks.)


I agree that transmission between "creatures" (humans, animals) occurs at a
very low rate on the physical layer, but I think that there is a lot more
that occurs on the higher level or more abstract functions which are related
to the "context" of information transmission.  The more abstract functions,
or "architecture" of thought would be the hard (or impossible) part to
reproduce on an existing computer.

I think that measuring the "bandwidth" of transmission can be a misleading
indicator of the amount of complexity of the transmission sequence, or the
complexity of the entities performing the communication.  For instance, I can
say one word to you, but the amount of information could be a great amount
depending on the secondary meanings of the word are relating to the context
that the word is used and the broader implications of the word.

Like if I say "nuclear", a whole array of related images are evoked in the
person that I say it to, such as:
	bomb
	war
	reactor
	atom
	family (one of these is not like the others...)
	Enola Gay
	Hiroshima
	Department of Defense
	Department of Energy
	radiation...

Using that kind of thinking, I'm trying to imagine that there must be a way
to transfer information at a speed greater than the bandwidth of the physical
layer.

There is some kind of "pre-understanding" that goes on in a conversation
between two creatures.  I guess you could compare it to an extremely
efficient compression algorithm that is implemented both of the creatures.
Both are aware of the structure and assemble and disassemble it in the
communication process.  The difference between the way that computers and
humans perform compression is that computers do it sequentially, whereas
people do it "instantaneously".  Anyhow, the bandwidth can be low, but the
amount of "information transmission" or "understanding".  I think can be much
higher.

The interaction between two creatures might be impossible to measure in terms
of complexity because the interaction is a synchronous one as well.  Both
machines are "doing their own thing" relative to the context of the situation
and occasionally sending sync pulses to coordinate the behavior.

I think that the biggest mistake that behaviorists make is that the think
that a single creature can be isolated, examined, and then "understood"
independent of it's environment.  By understood, I mean knowing enough about
it to develop some kind of model (actual or mathmatical) which behaves
exactly as the original creature would.  The best example I have of an
analagous problem is the Heisenburg (sp?) uncertaincy principle which says (I
think) that you cannot know the position and speed of an electron at the same
time.  The reason is that it is impossible to "measure" either of properties
without affecting the other, or that any measurement made will adversly
affect the results.  Even if the affects are tiny, I think that small errors
can accumulate very quickly.  Also, "measurement" is a very subjective
process.  You only see what you are looking for, in terms of your previous
experience, and an accumulation of the experience of others who preceded you.
How much do we *really* know?

Now I'm going to go way out with some theories I have.

I think that what has happened in the field of science is that all of the
models we are using to understand the world around us has only told us about
how "we" operate and think.  Each scientific discovery about the universe is
expressed in terms of our own view.

I'm reading a book called "Other Worlds (space, superspace, and the quantum
universe)" by Paul Davies which talks a lot about the Heisenburg uncertaincy
principle and how quantum mechanics works.  I'm going one step further in
suggesting that this advanced information about quantum mechanics (and other
scientific theories) is really modelling how our minds operate, and it may
coincidently tell us about how the universe operates.  There are amazing (I
think) parallels between particle physics and the way that "selves" operate.

In quantum mechanics, transmissions are done with photons.  And the photons
operate as both a particle and a wave.  Well, the transmission of words seems
to operate in a similar fashion.  Each word has properties of particles in
that they appear to be a contained unit of information (energy?)("Knowlege is
power" :-).  The words are also part of a "wave" motion in that the words
interfere with one another via the context of the presentation of words.

I don't think that we have a chance of modelling our behavior until we can
fully understand the nature of the interference patterns that occur in our
thoughts.  Also, I think that the patterns occur in 3D on the simplest level,
so we will probably need some kind of 3D (at least 3) memory storage/
processing device to even begin approximation.  Maybe like the crystal optical
storage devices in Authur Clark's "Rendezvous With Rama".  Or perhaps a
wetware bio-memory just like our own.

	--fred
-- 
--------------------------------------------------
Frederick J. Sena                sena@infinet.UUCP
Memotec Datacom, Inc.  N. Andover, MA