[ExI] Fwd: thought experiment part 1

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 14/12/2025 21:35, Colin Hales and John Clark wrote:
>
>             />>> So yes, we humans will/can make machines that have
>             the same fundamental physics "spark", and the details of
>             the kinds and degrees of it will be different. Those
>             machines cannot be based on general purpose computers /
>
>
>         *>>Why not?*
>
>
>     /> Because replicating the brain signalling physics of a natural
>     brain has never happened./
>
>
> *Nobody has even tried to make an AI that uses the same physiological 
> processes that a biological brain does because those biological 
> processes _SUCK_ compared to electronic processes. *
>
>     /> Since the beginning. A real artificial version of natural
>     excitable cells would emanate an EEG and MEG like us. The physics
>     of a general purpose computer doesn't do that./
>
>
> *Who cares! Long before EEG and MEG devices were invented people 
> concluded that their fellow human beings were conscious. Why? Because 
> they behaved intelligently.*
> **

"/replicating the brain signalling physics of a natural brain has never 
happened"

/This is both true and false, depending on what 'replicating' means.

You could say that replicating the physics of weather systems has never 
happened. In a sense, that is true, although it's irrelevant, because 
the aim is to /model/ weather systems, inside a computer. That's 
something we can do pretty well these days, and is extremely useful.

While I have no objection to the idea of building systems that replicate 
the physics of human thought, I don't think it's necessary, or even a 
good idea, when we can model the same processes in digital computers, 
which, incidentally, gives us much more scope for understanding and 
modifying them.

As John notes, using electronic systems (and particularly digital ones) 
is far superior to simply mimicking the physics of biology.

"/A real artificial version of natural excitable cells would emanate an 
EEG and MEG like us. The physics of a general purpose computer doesn't 
do that."/

This is the same kind of thinking that leads people to say things like 
"A simulation of a rainstorm isn't wet". This is true, but is also a 
pointless observation. Simulations of things produce simulated results, 
so a (sufficiently good) simulation of a rainstorm will produce 
simulated wetness. In the same way, a simulation, in a general-purpose 
computer, of natural excitable cells will produce simulated EEG and MEG 
(not that these matter, any more than the tick of a clock matters to how 
good it is at keeping time. because they are side-effects, and could be 
eliminated without any consequence).

General-purpose computers can produce any phenomenon that can be 
produced by classical physics, and that includes any biological 
phenomenon. If you object to simulated results, that's easily fixed by 
linking the computer model to the relevant transducers, which turn the 
simulated signals into 'real-world' ones.

Nobody, to my knowledge, thinks that digital electronic simulations of 
sound waves (as in modern synthesisers for example, or amplifiers, etc.) 
are inferior to 'real' sound, or can't be treated as exactly equivalent. 
Yet they are just numbers travelling along wires and through logic chips.

The same principle applies to thought.

And to mathematics. Is the result of 1+2 any different because you use 
an electronic calculator instead of an abacus, or your fingers? Does it 
matter that the calculator doesn't make the same clicking sound as the 
abacus beads?

Digital electronics, in the form of general-purpose computers are just 
as capable of producing any "fundamental physics 'spark'" as any other 
suitably complex physical system, like ion gates in semi-permeable 
membranes (the system our brains use), beer-cans and string, networks of 
rod-logic gates, magnetic fields and plasma, etc., etc. The specific 
substrate doesn't matter, as long as it's complex enough and capable of 
modifying its own behaviour. The big difference is that computers are 
much more versatile than any of those other things, and can operate much 
faster than most of them.

-- 
Ben

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