[ExI] Fwd: Is Artificial Life Conscious?

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 7:35 PM Colin Hales via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:


>  The chip designers spend a lot of time eliminating field
> cross-talk effects (treated as functional errors), confining EM fields to
> individual devices. In the brain, nature has created a unique signature in
> its EM field expression and the bulk EM field has a functional role.
> Field-effect cross talk is so pronounced, that it is possible to regard the
> brain as a single, unitary 100% solid EM field object so spatially large
> and strong that it spills out into the surrounding tissue (EEG/MEG see it).
>

### Does the bulk EM field of the brain have a functional role? How? Is
there empirical evidence in favor?

AFAIK EEG is just noise, not a functional part of the brain. If the EEG had
a functional role, then applying external very weak electric fields at the
power level of the EEG over the bulk of the brain would produce dramatic
cognitive effects, and we know empirically that such electric fields do not
have a measurable effect on cognition.

The hardware of the brain is a bit different from the hardware that we
currently use in computers - the brain makes extensive use of chemical
reactions as a substrate of computation and even in long-distance
conduction of information, which make it less prone to EM interference,
while computers rely almost exclusively on the movements of electrons in
conducting and semiconducting media, which makes it more susceptible to EM
fields that can push electrons around. TMS does disrupt brain function but
you need to use pretty strong magnetic fields.
 -------------------------

>
> In the end I predict that it will be found that the brain will not be
> Turing-computable. But to explore that you have to stop using
> general-purpose computers alone to explore artificial brains. Something
> that is not in the AI play-book .... and is a prospect that never gets
> countenanced in lists like these, where the great cargo cult of 'to do AGI
> is to use a general-purpose-computer' reigns without question.
>
>
### I would be very surprised if the functional capabilities of brains
turned out to be impossible to replicate in digital, Turing-equivalent
computers.

Rafal
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