Reading: The Relativistic Brain: How It Works and Why It Cannot by Simulated by a Turing Machine by Ronald Cicurel and Miguel A. L. Nicolelis - Part 2
Reading: The Relativistic Brain: How It Works and Why It Cannot by Simulated by a Turing Machine by Ronald Cicurel and Miguel A. L. Nicolelis - Part 2
I think I may have not kept my powder dry in writing a review (part 1 is here) before finishing the book.
Ronald Cicurel, and Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, The Relativistic Brain: How It Works and Why It Cannot by Simulated by a Turing Machine (Natal: Kios Press, 2015 ISBN 9781511617024).
The relativism refers to ‘processes’ in addition to more computational aspects of neuronal behaviour (and from which we form more mechanical and formally logical connections, and from this powerful hindsight digital computing is produced a rarefied pacticality, the Turing machine.
These ‘processes’ form a continuum, analogous only to a space-time continuum, so the metaphor here is some set of relations yet to be determined. The relatvity is unknown even is we are the output of this mess.
In the book, besides the listing of caveats on computational brains not being the whole picture, and the complaints of the waste of resources in AI & human brain research which do not look beyond pure computational models, there is thus a useful listing and critique of other non- or extra- computational theories of human/animal consciouness.
So, what is their theory or hypothesis about this processes?
Some interaction of (at the macro-level of the hum) of electro-magnetic activity of the brain which forms a continuum with more neuronal signalling in more computational forms, in which time cannot be excluded.
They argue a lot of brain function is non-localised (if not acutally global, if not holistic or emergent, these are not necessary to the theory) so how do we explain that with purely computational strategems?
Their hypothesis is potentially testable, I think, but unfashionable in the main markets available to us.
In current computing, whether serial computers, or more like parrallel computing, or, I guess even photonic computers using memristors and quantum mechanics or not, and even in these more analog computing attempts (—or straight quantum computing… —? no idea), the closest we get to this is the interference called parasitic capacitance between bits of circutry, and this is unwanted and engineered out or allowed for and ignored.
Did evolution use this interference to create consciouness? The sensitivity to sensitivities, does this successfully leap the gap and loop us back into ourselves as worldings?
I was expecting to world more words, but no, a parasiic reference is enough it seems.
So in looping the leap, I’ll just repeat that: the world and the self are both delusions of consciousness however this thing is become…. —so/but I do not know who is fooling who.
In the end Samuel R. Delany may be right and tarot reading is the way to go.
https://singularityhub.com/2023/09/15/newly-discovered-spirals-of-brain-activity-may-help-explain-cognition/
Spiraling Mystery
Why and how do these spirals occur? The team doesn’t yet have all the answers. But digging deeper, they found that the seeds of these spirals blossom out from boundaries between functional neural networks. The team thinks these twisting shapes could be essential for “effectively coordinating activity flow among these networks through their rotational motion.”
The spirals rotate and interact depending on the cognitive task at hand. They also tend to twirl and spread into brain regions dubbed “brain hubs,” such as the frontal parts of the brain or those related to integrating sensations.
But their interactions are especially enthralling. Based on the physics of turbulence, brain spirals that bump into each other carry a hefty amount of information. These waves capture data in space and time and propagate the information over the surface of living neurons in non-linear waves.
https://andrewgyork.github.io/gfp_magnetofluorescence/
Magnetic control of GFP-like fluorescent proteins
Rebecca Frank Hayward, Julia R. Lazzari-Dean, Andrew G. York* and Maria Ingaramo†
Calico Life Sciences LLC, South San Francisco, CA 94080, USA