Programming the Human Mind:

[Shining_Finger]

This is a thread where you can bring up somewhat Philosophical Questions regarding the human mind and programming, so I will list two I had thought of and didn't find an answer in a simple google search. 
1. If you had to, what language would you program the human mind in, from scratch, and why? You may import. 
2. If the human mind was a programming language, which programming language most resembles how the human mind would be if programmed in that language and why?

[dyresand]

Were no different from computers so yeah we learn things that is a sort of programming. Like
with hunger that is naturally programmed like so

if hungry
{
eat food
}

else if not hungry
{
don't eat food
}

This can be applied with language as well i mean were organic machines with emotions.

[I_am_not_mafia]

I program my own mind using C■■■■♤♡●■■○♡^&%"$546654:/&*£€÷×●♢■♤♡♤♢♧《《•《■○⊙☆▪○▪▪▪▪▪♤■[♡¡《•°⊙□○♤♧[《¤¿°

Segmentation fault.

[bennyboy]

The problem with programming the human mind is that the mind is analog in a very interesting way. Each neuron functions independently in a sense. Yes, there are transmissions of data acrosss synapses. However, there are also (at least as I recall from psych class) free-floating hormones etc. that affect reuptake of neurotransmitters and so on.

In other words, the brain not only consists of independent but cooperative parts, but each part essentially has many billions of parallel processing units.

Even a very advanced computer can't do that.

So I wouldn't worry about the software so much as the hardware. I really don't see how we can reproduce the human mind without essentially reproducing the human brain.

[Darkstar]

Relevant:

https://youtu.be/YWQnzylhgHc?list=WL

It isn't replicating a human mind, but I think this is still pretty interesting. Using a conventional programming language to recreate the human mind would probably be very difficult if not virtually impossible, but if neurons were simulated instead...

Of course, I am under the impression that in order to perfectly simulate all of the neurons in the human brain you would need to discover how all how all of those neurons work first. But then again, maybe not. Maybe you really could just put them together and get an apparent mind out of it even if you don't really know why it works. There would still be other chemicals you would need to take into consideration, though, like neurotransmitters, so maybe that wouldn't work after all...

[Thumpalumpacus]

I program my own mind using C■■■■♤♡●■■○♡^&%"$546654:/&*£€÷×●♢■♤♡♤♢♧《《•《■○⊙☆▪○▪▪▪▪▪♤■[♡¡《•°⊙□○♤♧[《¤¿°

Segmentation fault.

I don't get it, but I still laughed.

[pgrimes15]

I program my own mind using C■■■■♤♡●■■○♡^&%"$546654:/&*£€÷×●♢■♤♡♤♢♧《《•《■○⊙☆▪○▪▪▪▪▪♤■[♡¡《•°⊙□○♤♧[《¤¿°

Segmentation fault.

Checksum error

[I_am_not_mafia]

The problem with programming the human mind is that the mind is analog in a very interesting way.  Each neuron functions independently in a sense.  Yes, there are transmissions of data acrosss synapses.  However, there are also (at least as I recall from psych class) free-floating hormones etc. that affect reuptake of neurotransmitters and so on.

In other words, the brain not only consists of independent but cooperative parts, but each part essentially has many billions of parallel processing units.

Even a very advanced computer can't do that.

So I wouldn't worry about the software so much as the hardware.  I really don't see how we can reproduce the human mind without essentially reproducing the human brain.

Also each neuron is actually a really complex computational unit. A lot of people think that all it does is integrate its inputs and send out a signal. That misses out on the fact that each neuron has a dendritic tree with compartments with their own gating and effective resistance to the signal travelling up. You can actually perform binary logic on a dendritic tree based on which neurons are connecting to it. There is also suggestion that each dendritic spine on the tree performs a computation as well. Neurons also habituate, internal messengers and a membrane that lets in different ions at different rates that cause internal changes.

For example, what we call the synaptic weight, the strength of the connection between two neurons, is actually made up of three variables; N, P and K. I can't remember which stands for which but this is the number of vesicle release sites, the strength of the signal and the chance of releasing a vesicle.

Each neuron will connect to many orders of magnitude more neurons then the kind of connectivity we see between processors in a computer. Intel still only have a handful of cores and lock contention can really slow down parallel processing. Graphics cards have about 2,000 cores but you they need to work on independent parts of a problem, e.g. different parts of a picture file. Whereas each neuron connects to thousands of other neurons.

You can devote an entire computer to simulating just one neuron. The Bible of Computational Neuroscience is The Biophysics of Computation which describes how a single neuron can compute. Each chapter is devoted to a different part of the neuron, such as the axon. the membrane etc. If you want to skip all that though then just jump to Chapter 14 which provides useful models.

The brain is actually best understood as a complex physical system, not a computational unit.

[Longhorn]

Beep boop beep? .-.

[I_am_not_mafia]

I program my own mind using C■■■■♤♡●■■○♡^&%"$546654:/&*£€÷×●♢■♤♡♤♢♧《《•《■○⊙☆▪○▪▪▪▪▪♤■[♡¡《•°⊙□○♤♧[《¤¿°

Segmentation fault.

I don't get it, but I still laughed.

In case you're geeky enough to be interested, when programming in C (and also C++) there is very common problem that can occur when strings of human readable characters are not terminated with a null character. When this happens the code will read the string and then continue on reading the rest of the data in memory. If you print out non terminated strings you typically get loads of weird characters at the end. When your program starts accessing the protected memory of other programs then you get a segmentation fault on Unix / Linux systems.

Many, many systems have been hacked into by exploiting this bug and inserting new code into memory that can be executed.

If you try printing out binary characters such as machine code then it comes up as many different types of weird symbols. Luckily my tablet allowed me to type out those symbols because I'm not sure how to get them on a PC with a keyboard.