<div dir="ltr"><div style="min-height:100%"><div class="gmail-nH" style="width:1704.35px"><div class="gmail-nH" style=""><div class="gmail-nH gmail-aqk gmail-aql gmail-bkL" style="display:flex;background-color:transparent"><div class="gmail-nH gmail-bkK" style="overflow:hidden"><div class="gmail-nH" style="border-radius:16px;margin-bottom:16px;overflow-y:hidden"><div class="gmail-nH"><div class="gmail-nH gmail-ar4 gmail-z"><div class="gmail-aeI"><div class="gmail-AO" style=""><div id="gmail-:3" class="gmail-Tm gmail-aeJ" style="background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;overflow-y:scroll;padding-right:0px;height:411px"><div id="gmail-:1" class="gmail-aeF" style="padding:0px;vertical-align:bottom;min-height:221.143px"><div class="gmail-nH"><div class="gmail-nH" role="main"><div class="gmail-nH gmail-g"><table class="gmail-Bs gmail-nH gmail-iY gmail-bAt" cellpadding="0" role="presentation" style="border-spacing:0px;padding:0px;border-collapse:collapse;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;min-height:64ex;display:block;width:1416.46px"><tbody><tr class="gmail-aTN"><td class="gmail-Bu" style="vertical-align:top;padding:0px"><div class="gmail-nH gmail-a98 gmail-iY" style="background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;min-height:64ex;margin:0px;padding-right:16px"><div class="gmail-nH gmail-aHU" style=""><div class="gmail-nH gmail-hx" style="background-color:transparent;min-width:502px;padding:0px"><div class="gmail-nH gmail-bh" role="list"><div class="gmail-h7 gmail-j23lnd gmail-Aqhktf gmail-Jux0I" role="listitem" aria-expanded="true" tabindex="-1" style="clear:both;padding-bottom:0px;max-width:100000px;outline:none"><div class="gmail-Bk" style="margin-bottom:0px;border-width:0px;border-top-style:solid;border-right-style:initial;border-bottom-style:initial;border-left-style:initial;border-top-color:rgb(239,239,239);border-right-color:initial;border-left-color:initial;border-bottom-color:initial;border-radius:0px;width:1400.47px"><div class="gmail-G3 gmail-G2 gmail-afm" style="padding-top:0px;background-color:transparent;border-width:1px 0px 0px;border-right-style:initial;border-bottom-style:initial;border-left-style:initial;border-right-color:initial;border-bottom-color:rgba(100,121,143,0.12);border-left-color:initial;border-top-style:solid;border-top-color:rgba(100,121,143,0.12);border-radius:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px"><div><div id="gmail-:24q"><div class="gmail-adn gmail-ads" style="border-left:none;padding:0px;display:flex"><div class="gmail-gs" style="margin:0px;padding:0px 0px 20px;width:1328.48px"><div class="gmail-"><div id="gmail-:24t" class="gmail-ii gmail-gt gmail-adO" style="direction:ltr;margin:8px 0px 0px;padding:0px;font-size:0.875rem"><div id="gmail-:24s" class="gmail-a3s gmail-aiL" style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:small;line-height:1.5;overflow:hidden"><div><span class="gmail-im" style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:inherit;color:rgb(5,5,5);white-space:pre-wrap;font-size:0.875rem"><i style=""><b>Giovanni: Our brain is a simulation, not sure why it is not understood by most people. </b></i></span></div><div>Dave:
<span style="color:rgb(5,5,5);font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;white-space:pre-wrap">I don't think it's true. Our brains are biological organs. I don't understand what you think they're simulations of.
</span><br>It is a simulation of the "real world". When we process information about sensory inputs we have in our brain routines that interpret what the signals mean, this is done in a hierarchical way. From simple components of the sensory information all the way to naming the object in our head, associating it with similar experiences we had in the past and so on. For example, let's say you see a red box. You are really not "seeing" the box but simulating it in your head (maybe simulating is not the best word but close enough). You visual cortex breaks down the sensory input in small components like the angles of the box, different angles activate different neurons, the color of the box activate different type of neurons according to the wavelength of the light, all this basic info is passed to different layers of neurons that interpret to a higher level the information as puts it together in creating an interpretation of what you are seeing. Your brain has models of how the light in an environment is behaving and it tries to make sense of what is seeing via these models. In a sense you are creating a virtual red box not different from what is created in a computer game via basic elements. This why we actually are able to navigate a virtual space in a digital environment because the simulation of red boxes in that environment is not very different from what our brain is already doing when interprets the world. <br>All this shows that even sensory experiences are a kind of simulation, now consider ideas, memories, abstract concepts, theory of minds we use to interpret social interactions or other beings not necessarily human actions and so on and on. It is all a simulation. You would not doubt a dream is a simulation given you make up everything in it but the waking state is not that different, instead of stimulating random regions of your brain to activate memory and the equivalent of sensory inputs you actually get the inputs from the external world and so your experience is more coherent and anchored to the physical reality. But how this information is processed, interpreted, made sense of is not that different from what happens in a dream. This is not just my idea but there is a large body of evidence to support this conclusion from how magic tricks work, to optical illusions, to split brain experiments, people with different brain defects and illnesses and so on. Basically we make up stuff most of the time, we confabulate about the little filtered information we receive to make sense of the world. We do this all the time, maybe you don't think about this as a "simulation" but it is, we are modelling the world, that is indeed another way to say we are making a simulation of it in our heads. <br><br>Giovanni <br><br> </div></div></blockquote></span><div><font color="#050505" face="inherit"><span style="font-size:0.875rem;white-space:pre-wrap">
</span></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Feb 22, 2023 at 7:39 AM Dave S via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px"><span style="font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;font-size:0.875rem">On Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023 at 3:00 AM, Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:</span></div><div><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:inherit;color:rgb(5,5,5);white-space:pre-wrap;font-size:0.875rem">Our brain is a simulation, not sure why it is not understood by most people.</span></div></div></blockquote><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:inherit;color:rgb(5,5,5);white-space:pre-wrap;font-size:0.875rem"><br></span></div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:inherit;color:rgb(5,5,5);white-space:pre-wrap;font-size:0.875rem">I don't think it's true. Our brains are biological organs. I don't understand what you think they're simulations of.</span></div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:inherit;color:rgb(5,5,5);white-space:pre-wrap;font-size:0.875rem"><br></span></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:inherit;color:rgb(5,5,5);white-space:pre-wrap;font-size:0.875rem">We make up the world. Most of our conscious life is actually filling the gaps, confabulating to make sense of the sensory information we receive (highly filtered and selected) and our internal mental states.</span></div></div></blockquote><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:inherit;color:rgb(5,5,5);white-space:pre-wrap;font-size:0.875rem"><br></span></div><div><font color="#050505" face="inherit"><span style="font-size:0.875rem;white-space:pre-wrap">If you're saying that our internal representations of the world are </span></font><font color="#050505" face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">inaccurate</span></font><font color="#050505" face="inherit"><span style="font-size:0.875rem;white-space:pre-wrap"> and incomplete, I agree.</span></font></div><div><br></div><div>-Dave</div>
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