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Dario Izzo

Miguel Nicolelis Says the Brain Is Not Computable, Bashes Kurzweil's Singularity | MIT ... - 9 views

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    As I said ten years ago and psychoanalysts 100 years ago. Luis I am so sorry :) Also ... now that the commission funded the project blue brain is a rather big hit Btw Nicolelis is a rather credited neuro-scientist
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    nice article; Luzi would agree as well I assume; one aspect not clear to me is the causal relationship it seems to imply between consciousness and randomness ... anybody?
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    This is the same thing Penrose has been saying for ages (and yes, I read the book). IF the human brain proves to be the only conceivable system capable of consciousness/intelligence AND IF we'll forever be limited to the Turing machine type of computation (which is what the "Not Computable" in the article refers to) AND IF the brain indeed is not computable, THEN AI people might need to worry... Because I seriously doubt the first condition will prove to be true, same with the second one, and because I don't really care about the third (brains is not my thing).. I'm not worried.
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    In any case, all AI research is going in the wrong direction: the mainstream is not on how to go beyond Turing machines, rather how to program them well enough ...... and thats not bringing anywhere near the singularity
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    It has not been shown that intelligence is not computable (only some people saying the human brain isn't, which is something different), so I wouldn't go so far as saying the mainstream is going in the wrong direction. But even if that indeed was the case, would it be a problem? If so, well, then someone should quickly go and tell all the people trading in financial markets that they should stop using computers... after all, they're dealing with uncomputable undecidable problems. :) (and research on how to go beyond Turing computation does exist, but how much would you want to devote your research to a non existent machine?)
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    [warning: troll] If you are happy with developing algorithms that serve the financial market ... good for you :) After all they have been proved to be useful for humankind beyond any reasonable doubt.
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    Two comments from me: 1) an apparently credible scientist takes Kurzweil seriously enough to engage with him in polemics... oops 2) what worries me most, I didn't get the retail store pun at the end of article...
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    True, but after Google hired Kurzweil he is de facto being taken seriously ... so I guess Nicolelis reacted to this.
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    Crazy scientist in residence... interesting marketing move, I suppose.
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    Unfortunately, I can't upload my two kids to the cloud to make them sleep, that's why I comment only now :-). But, of course, I MUST add my comment to this discussion. I don't really get what Nicolelis point is, the article is just too short and at a too popular level. But please realize that the question is not just "computable" vs. "non-computable". A system may be computable (we have a collection of rules called "theory" that we can put on a computer and run in a finite time) and still it need not be predictable. Since the lack of predictability pretty obviously applies to the human brain (as it does to any sufficiently complex and nonlinear system) the question whether it is computable or not becomes rather academic. Markram and his fellows may come up with a incredible simulation program of the human brain, this will be rather useless since they cannot solve the initial value problem and even if they could they will be lost in randomness after a short simulation time due to horrible non-linearities... Btw: this is not my idea, it was pointed out by Bohr more than 100 years ago...
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    I guess chaos is what you are referring to. Stuff like the Lorentz attractor. In which case I would say that the point is not to predict one particular brain (in which case you would be right): any initial conditions would be fine as far as any brain gets started :) that is the goal :)
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    Kurzweil talks about downloading your brain to a computer, so he has a specific brain in mind; Markram talks about identifying neural basis of mental diseases, so he has at least pretty specific situations in mind. Chaos is not the only problem, even a perfectly linear brain (which is not a biological brain) is not predictable, since one cannot determine a complete set of initial conditions of a working (viz. living) brain (after having determined about 10% the brain is dead and the data useless). But the situation is even worse: from all we know a brain will only work with a suitable interaction with its environment. So these boundary conditions one has to determine as well. This is already twice impossible. But the situation is worse again: from all we know, the way the brain interacts with its environment at a neural level depends on his history (how this brain learned). So your boundary conditions (that are impossible to determine) depend on your initial conditions (that are impossible to determine). Thus the situation is rather impossible squared than twice impossible. I'm sure Markram will simulate something, but this will rather be the famous Boltzmann brain than a biological one. Boltzman brains work with any initial conditions and any boundary conditions... and are pretty dead!
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    Say one has an accurate model of a brain. It may be the case that the initial and boundary conditions do not matter that much in order for the brain to function an exhibit macro-characteristics useful to make science. Again, if it is not one particular brain you are targeting, but the 'brain' as a general entity this would make sense if one has an accurate model (also to identify the neural basis of mental diseases). But in my opinion, the construction of such a model of the brain is impossible using a reductionist approach (that is taking the naive approach of putting together some artificial neurons and connecting them in a huge net). That is why both Kurzweil and Markram are doomed to fail.
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    I think that in principle some kind of artificial brain should be feasible. But making a brain by just throwing together a myriad of neurons is probably as promising as throwing together some copper pipes and a heap of silica and expecting it to make calculations for you. Like in the biological system, I suspect, an artificial brain would have to grow from a small tiny functional unit by adding neurons and complexity slowly and in a way that in a stable way increases the "usefulness"/fitness. Apparently our brain's usefulness has to do with interpreting inputs of our sensors to the world and steering the body making sure that those sensors, the brain and the rest of the body are still alive 10 seconds from now (thereby changing the world -> sensor inputs -> ...). So the artificial brain might need sensors and a body to affect the "world" creating a much larger feedback loop than the brain itself. One might argue that the complexity of the sensor inputs is the reason why the brain needs to be so complex in the first place. I never quite see from these "artificial brain" proposals in how far they are trying to simulate the whole system and not just the brain. Anyone? Or are they trying to simulate the human brain after it has been removed from the body? That might be somewhat easier I guess...
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    Johannes: "I never quite see from these "artificial brain" proposals in how far they are trying to simulate the whole system and not just the brain." In Artificial Life the whole environment+bodies&brains is simulated. You have also the whole embodied cognition movement that basically advocates for just that: no true intelligence until you model the system in its entirety. And from that you then have people building robotic bodies, and getting their "brains" to learn from scratch how to control them, and through the bodies, the environment. Right now, this is obviously closer to the complexity of insect brains, than human ones. (my take on this is: yes, go ahead and build robots, if the intelligence you want to get in the end is to be displayed in interactions with the real physical world...) It's easy to dismiss Markram's Blue Brain for all their clever marketing pronouncements that they're building a human-level consciousness on a computer, but from what I read of the project, they seem to be developing a platfrom onto which any scientist can plug in their model of a detail of a detail of .... of the human brain, and get it to run together with everyone else's models of other tiny parts of the brain. This is not the same as getting the artificial brain to interact with the real world, but it's a big step in enabling scientists to study their own models on more realistic settings, in which the models' outputs get to effect many other systems, and throuh them feed back into its future inputs. So Blue Brain's biggest contribution might be in making model evaluation in neuroscience less wrong, and that doesn't seem like a bad thing. At some point the reductionist approach needs to start moving in the other direction.
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    @ Dario: absolutely agree, the reductionist approach is the main mistake. My point: if you take the reductionsit approach, then you will face the initial and boundary value problem. If one tries a non-reductionist approach, this problem may be much weaker. But off the record: there exists a non-reductionist theory of the brain, it's called psychology... @ Johannes: also agree, the only way the reductionist approach could eventually be successful is to actually grow the brain. Start with essentially one neuron and grow the whole complexity. But if you want to do this, bring up a kid! A brain without body might be easier? Why do you expect that a brain detached from its complete input/output system actually still works. I'm pretty sure it does not!
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    @Luzi: That was exactly my point :-)
Alexander Wittig

Self-Destructing Gadgets Made Not So Mission Impossible - 1 views

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    Self-destruct options from the Mission: Impossible movies could become a reality for even the most common smartphones and laptops used by government officials or corporate employees. A new self-destruct mechanism can destroy electronics within 10 seconds through wireless commands or the triggering of certain sensors. Just don't leave your computer sitting in the sun for long...
LeopoldS

David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face | Alan Rusbridger ... - 0 views

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    During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route - by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks - the thumb drive and the first amendment - had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

    The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred - with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

    Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won't do it in London. The seizure of Miranda's laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald's work.

    The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood
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    Sarah Harrison is a lawyer that has been staying with Snowden in Hong Kong and Moscow. She is a UK citizen and her family is there. After the miranda case where the boyfriend of the reporter was detained at the airport, can Sarah return safely home? Will her family be pressured by the secret service? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23759834
ESA ACT

Sensors for impossible stimuli may solve the stereo correspondence problem - Nature Neu... - 0 views

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    The title could be from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Sensors for impossible stimuli.
LeopoldS

The Pacific free trade deal that's anything but free | Dean Baker | Comment is free | g... - 0 views

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    Frightening! In reality, the deal has almost nothing to do with trade: actual trade barriers between these countries are already very low. The TPP is an effort to use the holy grail of free trade to impose conditions and override domestic laws in a way that would be almost impossible if the proposed measures had to go through the normal legislative process. The expectation is that by lining up powerful corporate interests, the governments will be able to ram this new "free trade" pact through legislatures on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
ESA ACT

g.tec - Guger Technologies - 0 views

shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
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    Want your own portable EEG ? Impossible to find the price...
ESA ACT

Materials and noncoplanar mesh designs for integrated circuits with linear elastic resp... - 0 views

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    Next astronaut suit: Electronic systems that offer elastic mechanical responses to high-strain deformations are of growing interest because of their ability to enable new biomedical devices and other applications whose requirements are impossible to satis
anonymous

Nasa validates 'impossible' space drive (Wired UK) - 3 views

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    NASA validates the EmDrive (http://emdrive.com/) technology for converting electrical energy into thrust. (from the website: "Thrust is produced by the amplification of the radiation pressure of an electromagnetic wave propagated through a resonant waveguide assembly.")
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    I would be very very skeptic on this results and am actually ready to take bets that they are victims of something else than "new physics" ... some measurement error e.g.
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    Assuming that this system is feasible, and taking the results of Chinese team (Thrust of 720 mN http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/06/emdrive-and-cold-fusion), I wonder whether this would allow for some actual trajectory maneuvers (and to which degree). If so, can we simulate some possible trajectories, e.g. compare the current solutions to this one ? For example, Shawyer (original author) claims that this system would be capable of stabilizing ISS without need for refueling. Other article on the same topic: http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/1/5959637/nasa-cannae-drive-tests-have-promising-results
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    To be exact, the chinese reported 720mN and the americans found ~50microN. The first one I simply do not believe and the second one seems more credible, yet it has to be said that measuring such low thrust levels on a thrust-stand is very difficult and prone to measurement errors. @Krzys, the thrust level of 720mN is within the same range of other electric propulsion systems which are considered - and even used in some cases - for station keeping, also for the ISS actually (for which there are also ideas to use a high power system delivering several Newtons of thrust). Then on the idea, I do not rule out that an interaction between the EM waves and 'vacuum' could be possible, however if this would be true then this surely would be detectable in any particle accelerator as it would produce background events/noise. The energy densities involved and the conversion to thrust via some form of interaction with the vacuum surely could not provide thrusts in the range reported by the chinese, nor the americans. The laws of momentum conservation would still need to apply. Finally, 'quantum vacuum virtual plasma'.. really?
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    I have to join the skeptics on this one ...
joergmueller

In a new round of testing, NASA confirms yet again that the 'impossible' EMdrive thrust... - 4 views

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    Engineer Roger Shawyer's controversial EM Drive thruster jets back into relevancy this week, as a team of researchers at NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories recently completed yet another round of testing on the seemingly impossible tech.
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    I like this just because it will end up on Thijs' desk :D
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    Interesting that the new comes in... Yahoo Finance :). Another more complete article http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/11/nasa-eagleworks-has-tested-upgraded.html
Luís F. Simões

Why Is It So Hard to Predict the Future? - The Atlantic - 1 views

  • The Peculiar Blindness of Experts Credentialed authorities are comically bad at predicting the future. But reliable forecasting is possible.
  • The result: The experts were, by and large, horrific forecasters. Their areas of specialty, years of experience, and (for some) access to classified information made no difference. They were bad at short-term forecasting and bad at long-term forecasting. They were bad at forecasting in every domain. When experts declared that future events were impossible or nearly impossible, 15 percent of them occurred nonetheless. When they declared events to be a sure thing, more than one-quarter of them failed to transpire. As the Danish proverb warns, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”
  • Tetlock and Mellers found that not only were the best forecasters foxy as individuals, but they tended to have qualities that made them particularly effective collaborators. They were “curious about, well, really everything,” as one of the top forecasters told me. They crossed disciplines, and viewed their teammates as sources for learning, rather than peers to be convinced. When those foxes were later grouped into much smaller teams—12 members each—they became even more accurate. They outperformed—by a lot—a group of experienced intelligence analysts with access to classified data.
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  • This article is adapted from David Epstein’s book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.
Beniamino Abis

Quantum Physics and Game Theory - 1 views

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    Players with access to quantum resources can outperform classical ones. This will lead to novel joint strategies, impossible to achieve classically. Moreover, some of these strategies represent equilibrium points, leading to the notion of quantum/no-signalling Nash equilibrium.
Marcus Maertens

'Impossible' material made by Uppsala University researchers - 1 views

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    Something for our Nano structure fans. Funniest remark: "One of the researchers got to take advantage of his Russian language skills since some of the chemistry details necessary for understanding the reaction mechanism was only available in an old Russian PhD thesis."
Thijs Versloot

Volvo Invents a Solar Panel That Unfurls From the Car Trunk - 2 views

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    A 7x7x3m large unfolding structure from the car trunk. "Before the design is ready to roll, the team still needs to tune up the solar components, a challenge made more difficult by the pavilion's inherent mobility, making it impossible to gauge how sunlight will fall on it."
johannessimon81

Cosmological model without accelerated expansion proposed - 1 views

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    Redshift in this model is partially produced by a change in the masses of elementary particles (and atoms)
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    It seems to solve the problem of infinite energy density at the singularity in any case. I would love to see a way of experimentally verifying this, although most people seem to believe it is wrong. I read the following quote though by Dirac to Pauli "we all agree your idea is crazy, but the real question is it crazy enough to be correct?"
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    As far as I can see, this is not untestable per se, rather an explanation to the redshift that is equivalent to accelerating expansion. It is not that the theory is untestable, rather just another way of looking at it. Kind of like that its sometimes convenient to consider light a particle, sometimes a wave. In the same way it could sometime convenient to view the universe as static with increasing mass instead.
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    Well the premiss "matter getting heavier" may be up to falsification in some way or another. Currently, there is no absolute method to determine mass so it might even be plausible that this is actually the case. I don't think it is related but there is a problem with the 1kg-standards (1 official and 6 copies) where the masses seem to deviate.
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    It should not be impossible to verify a change in mass(es) over time. For example the electron cyclotron frequency scales ~e/m while the Hydrogen emission frequencies scale with ~m*e^4. Using multiple relationships like that which can be easily and accurately measured an increase in the mass of fundamental particles should - in principle - be detectable (even if the mass of the earth increases at the same time changing the relativistic reference frame).
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    The Watt balance and a definition using the Planck's constant seems to do the trick and is currently being discussed. Would the electron charge not be problematic as it is related to Coulombs which depends on Amperes which is defined by Newtons which hence depends back on the mass again?
johannessimon81

Physicists Succeed in Making 'Impossible' Gamma-Ray Lens - 0 views

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    High energy gamma rays are shown to be bent slightly by specialized lenses. The effect is likely due to pair-creation close to the atomic nuclei in the material.
Thijs Versloot

Flexible ceramics - @MIT has 'cracked' the impossible combination - 0 views

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    "Usually if you bend a ceramic by 1 percent, it will shatter," Schuh says. But these tiny filaments, with a diameter of just 1 micrometer - one millionth of a meter - can be bent by 7 to 8 percent repeatedly without any cracking, he says. Application areas would be microactuation as the ceramics can sustain the largest forces. Drug release?
Thijs Versloot

Most Amazing Exoplanets #ifls - 1 views

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    The most astounding fact about Kepler-78b is that it shouldn't even exist, according to our current knowledge of planetary formation. It is extremely close to its star at only 550,000 miles (900,000 kilometers). As a comparison, Mercury only gets within 28.5 million miles (45.9 million kilometers) of the sun in the nearest point of orbit. With that proximity, it isn't clear how the planet could have formed as the star was much larger when the planet formed. With its current distance, that would mean it formed inside the star, which is impossible as far as we know.
Thijs Versloot

China team takes on tech challenge of supercavitation - 1 views

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    "A Soviet supercavitation torpedo called Shkval was able to reach a speed of 370km/h or more - much faster than any other conventional torpedoes," he said. However, The SCMP highlighted two problems in supercavitation technology. First, the submerged vessel needed to be launched at high speeds, approaching 100km/h, to generate and maintain the air bubble. Secondly, it is difficult if not impossible to steer the vessel using conventional mechanisms, which are inside the bubble, without direct contact with water. As a result, its application has been limited to unmanned vessels, fired in a straight line.
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    can't you just selectively inject the gas so that you control in which direction the bubble forms?
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