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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span
style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">On Mon, Oct
6, 2025 at 10:07 AM <<a
href="mailto:spike@rainier66.com" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">spike@rainier66.com</a>>
wrote:</span></div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
class="m_-9080567580291915986gmaildefault"><span
style="font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif"><i
style=""><font size="4"><span
class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>After
studying how ChatGPT works, using matrix
multiplication, I keep coming back to the
same question I had 40 years ago: is
human-like intelligence substrate
dependent. </font></i></span></span></p>
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<br>
Yes. All intelligence is substrate-dependent, as in, dependent on a
substrate. There's no such thing as a disembodied mind.<br>
<br>
I don't see, though, why it wouldn't be substrate-<i>indifferent</i>,
within certain bounds. i.e. the substrate has to have certain
properties, but there will be a large number of physical systems
that can act as substrates (beer-cans and string, for instance 🙂).<br>
<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
class="m_-9080567580291915986gmaildefault"><span
style="font-size:13.5pt"><i style=""><font
face="georgia, serif"><span
class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>The only
reason I can think of is that computer
software is deterministic: same input, same
process, same output every time. <br>
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<br>
Well, for one thing that's not exactly true, for another, we
wouldn't be talking about 'computer software' exactly. Or at least
not only.<br>
<br>
This relates to a question that has come up again and again in the
past. "How can a bunch of 'if-thens' have feelings etc.??"<br>
<br>
That's like asking how can a bunch of ion channels have feelings,
when trying to understand a brain.<br>
<br>
Or "how can you sit on a bunch of quarks?" when considering a chair.<br>
<br>
Levels, it's all about ascending levels of organisation, or what
sometimes gets called (misleadingly, I think) 'emergence'. H2O
molecules aren't wet, neural spike trains aren't blue, etc.<br>
<br>
You know that it's trivially easy to create a program that will
produce a different result every time it's run, or results that are
not possible to predict.<br>
<br>
Consider that a brain is made up of membranes with ion channels,
which are organised into tubes and bags separating different volumes
of different solutes, which are organised into networks that
dynamically change, that are organised into a large number of
specialised brain areas that implement different mental modules,
connected to each other in lots of different ways, and to the
external environment via sensory organs and muscles and endocrine
glands. How many levels is that? At least 5, probably more if you go
into detail.<br>
<br>
And then look at the same system from the point of view of the
information it processes. Same principle. Simple signals (individual
neurons firing or not), organised into more complex data structures
(neural spikes), up a level (spike trains) up a level (patterns of
activation of low-level neural networks, where the same pattern of
spike trains signifies different things in different axons), up a
level (patterns of activation in different networks), up a level
(modules and sub-modules switching into different configurations),
up a level (groups of modules talking to one another)...<br>
<br>
You get the idea?<br>
<br>
You end up with the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Beethovens 9th,
wavelet theory, love, homesickness, awe, curiosity, etc. etc.<br>
<br>
Zeroes and Ones in a digital information-processing machine are like
action potentials in an axon. Go up through several levels of
organisation and you get spreadsheets and word processors and
chat-bots. Several more and you get various kinds of AI and systems
capable of running a human mind.<br>
<br>
The thing we don't know yet is how to actually organise these higher
levels.<br>
<br>
I'm thinking that current AI systems could help with that. Just as
we use them for drug discovery and creating new enzymes, we could
use them for 'cognition discovery'. Rapidly trying out different
configurations of data-processing systems to see which of them show
promise for complex cognition and consciousness. And for supporting
human thought-patterns.<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ben</pre>
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