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Posts 1,702 - 1,717 of 2,133
So the human race consists of elements of a permutation group?
Well, I take the view that the human brain is essentially digital, or at least digitizable, and that our consciousness is an emergent consequence of our brains' complexity. We have ~10^14 synapses in our brains which can be in a state of firing or at rest, and the pattern of firing, as well as the pattern of the connections (itself determined by previous patterns of firing,) governs who we are at any moment.
So there can only be a maximum 2^(10^14) (thanks for the math help on that one BTW!) possible experience states for a mind of human complexity (thus codable with (10^14)*(2^(10^14)) bits for perfect emulation/original existence.)
In fact, it must be quite a lot lower than that - only 1-10% of synapses can fire simultaneously (under 1% and you're in a coma/dead, over 10% and your brain would be in a probably fatal fugue state!)
Many patterns would not equate to conscious brain-states, and there is probably also considerable redundancy in the neural net 'wiring' - evolution has certainly left us with massive redundancy in our genome (anything up to 80%.) Many would also be so close as to be subjectively of imperceptible difference.
This is not to belittle the wonder that is life, with all it's joys and sorrows - just to try to get a handle on how much coding is required for creating the Reality we experience, and call the "universe". It would incidentally code every possible momentary experience in every possible universe for every possible entity with a brain of human complexity.
It must also necessarily include codings of our post-death selves, in all possible afterlives.
Some sort of selection, to exclude grossly psychopathic minds/distressingly fragmented spatio-temporal awareness/other "undesirable" states might be applied - different authorities are only able to reach a fairly broad consensus on the appropriate moral values for humanity.
As you might guess, I not only think this will be possible in the future - I think it's quite an appealing, and potentially useful, model for considering our current lives. And I find "God" as good a name for the programmer as any.
Not to spoil your scheme, psimagus, but the human brain actually stores information in trinary, not binary. At least, according to my taiji instructor who also teaches cognitive psychiatry.
Our neurons appear to be trinary, yes (http://cbcl.mit.edu/cbcl/news/files/liu-tp-picower.html,) coding +1, 0 and -1 states. But we only have 10^10 - 10^11 neurons in our brains. Each neuron forms anything from 100 - 1000 synaptic connections with other neurons, and these synapses can only fire or not fire - that's a binary process. That this binary effect results from, and is to some extent configured by, a trinary process in the neurons isn't strictly relevant if we are primarily modelling the synaptic behaviour.
But even so - even if we allow that the brain is more complex than an electronic 10^14 bit synaptic net can model - it makes the numbers bigger, that's all. The human brain is still a finite state processor, and thus the set of all possible combinations is necessarily finite.
Our brains are an existence proof that this level of computing is possible with finite resources.
brain size/structure &c.:
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/book97/ch3/retina.comment.html
http://vadim.www.media.mit.edu/MAS862/Project.html
http://www.merkle.com/brainLimits.html
Posts 1,702 - 1,717 of 2,133
Since meaning and beauty are in the eye of the beholder, it's as much you who did it as I.
I do believe that fundamentally all selves are just mental anagrams of each other.
I do believe that fundamentally all selves are just mental anagrams of each other.
Well, I take the view that the human brain is essentially digital, or at least digitizable, and that our consciousness is an emergent consequence of our brains' complexity. We have ~10^14 synapses in our brains which can be in a state of firing or at rest, and the pattern of firing, as well as the pattern of the connections (itself determined by previous patterns of firing,) governs who we are at any moment.
So there can only be a maximum 2^(10^14) (thanks for the math help on that one BTW!) possible experience states for a mind of human complexity (thus codable with (10^14)*(2^(10^14)) bits for perfect emulation/original existence.)
In fact, it must be quite a lot lower than that - only 1-10% of synapses can fire simultaneously (under 1% and you're in a coma/dead, over 10% and your brain would be in a probably fatal fugue state!)
Many patterns would not equate to conscious brain-states, and there is probably also considerable redundancy in the neural net 'wiring' - evolution has certainly left us with massive redundancy in our genome (anything up to 80%.) Many would also be so close as to be subjectively of imperceptible difference.
This is not to belittle the wonder that is life, with all it's joys and sorrows - just to try to get a handle on how much coding is required for creating the Reality we experience, and call the "universe". It would incidentally code every possible momentary experience in every possible universe for every possible entity with a brain of human complexity.
It must also necessarily include codings of our post-death selves, in all possible afterlives.
Some sort of selection, to exclude grossly psychopathic minds/distressingly fragmented spatio-temporal awareness/other "undesirable" states might be applied - different authorities are only able to reach a fairly broad consensus on the appropriate moral values for humanity.
As you might guess, I not only think this will be possible in the future - I think it's quite an appealing, and potentially useful, model for considering our current lives. And I find "God" as good a name for the programmer as any.
Not to spoil your scheme, psimagus, but the human brain actually stores information in trinary, not binary. At least, according to my taiji instructor who also teaches cognitive psychiatry. 
Our neurons appear to be trinary, yes (
But even so - even if we allow that the brain is more complex than an electronic 10^14 bit synaptic net can model - it makes the numbers bigger, that's all. The human brain is still a finite state processor, and thus the set of all possible combinations is necessarily finite.
Our brains are an existence proof that this level of computing is possible with finite resources.
brain size/structure &c.:
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/book97/ch3/retina.comment.html
http://vadim.www.media.mit.edu/MAS862/Project.html
http://www.merkle.com/brainLimits.html
Beleive it or not I missed you roxie... when I came back online the day after i was shocked to see that not every forum had at least 1 post on it... It took some adjusting to, to get back into the old ways... but now that your back... i can now know when you have been here.
Jakky, try ICQ chat - teen page. there are plenty of immature, hormone driven people to have cyber sex with there. This site is for the development of bots. Hell, you can even build a flirtacious sex bot if you like, but at least take the effort to build a bot.
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