[ExI] Why stop at glutamate?

Tue Apr 11 14:33:53 UTC 2023

*so we don't need to care about whether those 1s and 0s are represented
with redness and greenness properties*
There is not such a thing as greenness and redness properties. Somehow the
brain decided that it needs to be aware of the presence of light in a given
range of frequencies. It came up with an incredibly elaborate way to
achieve this that requires dozen of steps involving millions of neurons,
probably billions of interactions and events (firing, summing of these
firing, decoding, filtering, hierarchical selection). It in
fact involvement of the large part of the neural net that the brain is made
of.  This net is flexible, if a neuron dies it can be replaced, if a given
level of NaCl is missing another salt can be used, if a connection is lost
another one can be created. The main thing is that the general information
encoded in the relative weights of the connection is somehow the same from
moment to moment and when the input is "EM vibration in a given frequency"
then the response is "I perceive red".
The particular setup and realization of all this is unique in each brain
with a lot of similarities given our genetic shared histories. But it
changes even in the same individual from day to day or even in the same day
if you take a drug for example.
I can tell you a personal story.
There was a time when I was very depressed after a divorce.
Nothing worked in terms of drugs. But they gave me so many of them that at
a point something incredible happened to my physiology.
My sense of taste and smell went completely crazy. I could not recognize
any of the normal smells. It happened also quite suddenly.
A friend brought me to a restaurant and I thought they tried to poison me
(the brain is making things up to justify incongruent information) because
the food tasted as if it was made of some horrible rusty metal. When I went
home the smell of the wood floors (that I could not smell at all before)
was completely intolerable and was giving me migraines. I had to put a wet
rug on my face and stay still for hours and hours and little by little this
crazy short circuit in my brain went away. It was horrible.
What do you think it happened in your understanding of how the brain works?
Also, I bet if I take the same drugs I may not react in the same way. Who
knows what exactly happened? Was it a combination of drugs, Was it what was
going on in my brain in terms of being stressed and not sleeping for days?
Physiology is a mess.
If you can lose so easily the sense of smell or be transformed so radically
it is clear there is not such a thing as a "solid" greenness quality in
your brain. It is a complex and delicate process made of connections and
neural patterns.

On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 7:13 AM Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com>
wrote:

> *Here is what I mean by "old guys redness" , let's say some guy is
> engineered to gradually swap his yellowness and redness properties, as he
> ages.*
> *When he is young, he grounds the code word red with old
> guy's yellowness(glycine).  In middle age, he grounds the code word red
> with old guys orangeness(ascorbate).*
> *And of course, when he is old, he grounds the code word red with the true
> old guys redness(glutamate).*
> Brent,
> This is not how physiology even works.
> Physiology often uses 2-3 (sometimes more) ways to achieve the same
> things. For example, a particular salt can be used to change the
> polarization of a neuron. What it matters is that the ions has the right
> polarization. There are different types of enzymes that have similar
> results. Different pathways that achieve similar scope. This way you can
> certain compounds work as medicine, even if not identical to the chemicals
> in our body certain compounds generate certain effects because they share
> similar properties with the natural endogenous occurring ones. There are
> hundreds of examples. Again, functions is more important than the
> particular physical makeup of the system. Also, the brain repurposes
> different areas, new connections are made all the time, and nothing is
> fixed. New synapses, new spines. You insist on something concrete and
> analog in the brain that creates the sensation of red but there is no such
> a thing. Physiology doesn't change just with age (and it does in particular
> with the brain) but having had enough sleep, what you ate, if you have
> enough nutrients in your body if you ingested a drug or some mind-altering
> substance. Not sure how this has to be repeated so many times. This why
> again we care about function and information because even if doesn't seem
> concrete it is actually what really matters.
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> On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 6:20 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 3:21 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 12:05 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Other parts of the brain decode the meaning of the signals they
>>>>> receive.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> They decode it to WHAT?  Decoding from one code, to another code, none
>>>> of which is like anything
>>>>
>>>
>>> You are now theorizing that there is nothing it is like to be the
>>> process that decodes a signal and reaches some state of having determined
>>> which from a broad array of possibilities, that signal represents. That is
>>> what qualia are: discriminations within a high dimensionality space.
>>>
>>> nor are they grounded is not yet grounding anything.  It is still just a
>>>> code with no grounded referent so you can't truly decode them in any
>>>> meaningful way.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> What does it mean to ground something? Explain how you see grounding
>>> achieved (in detail)?
>>>
>>
>> It is all about what is required (experimentally) to get someone to
>> experience stand alone, no grounding dictionary required, "old guys
>> redness".  (the requirement for grounding as in: "oh THAT is what old guys
>> redness is like.")
>>
>> Here is what I mean by "old guys redness" , let's say some guy is
>> engineered to gradually swap his yellowness and redness properties, as he
>> ages.
>> When he is young, he grounds the code word red with old
>> guy's yellowness(glycine).  In middle age, he grounds the code word red
>> with old guys orangeness(ascorbate).
>> And of course, when he is old, he grounds the code word red with the true
>> old guys redness(glutamate).
>>
>> I can see how thinking of things in substrate independent ways is very
>> powerful, for certain tasks.  (the only kinds of tasks some of you care
>> about?) The reason we think about things digitally (as 1s, and 0s), is so
>> we don't need to care about whether those 1s and 0s are represented with
>> redness and greenness properties, vs holes and absences of holes in paper
>> properties, vs any other distinguishable properties we'd care to
>> represent 1s and 0s with.  (you guys just ignore the additional cost and
>> inefficiencies required to maintain all those extra dictionaries, so things
>> can be simpler at the higher substrate independent level. You'd prefer to
>> compute on virtual machines, than directly on naked hardware)
>>
>> I guess some of us care about the difference between these 3 (and we want
>> to know the true colors of things), and others just worry about being able
>> to tell us the strawberry is red, and don't care about the nature of true
>> elemental properties, and what is required to experimentally
>> demonstrate them to others.  (as required to unambiguously eff the
>> ineffable natures of properties.)
>> [image: 3_functionally_equal_machines_tiny.png]
>>
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>>
>
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