Seeing red

[bennyboy]

Logic gates are primarily implemented using [/font][/color]diodes or transistors acting as electronic switches, but can also be constructed using vacuum tubes, electromagnetic relays (relay logic), fluidic logic, pneumatic logic, optics, molecules, or even mechanical elements. With amplification, logic gates can be cascaded in the same way that Boolean functions can be composed, allowing the construction of a physical model of all of Boolean logic, and therefore, all of the algorithms and mathematics that can be described with Boolean logic.

Okay, so we're talking exclusively about analog or chaotic systems that are constrained in such a way that they should yield consistent boolean results. If so, I am highly skeptical about whether the brain can be modeled using any number of logic gates. I really think chaos computing is more powerful than that, and is different in important ways-- although articles like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_computing

draw parallels to boolean logic anyway.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm guessing you probably dream in binary right? I'd like to too...

It gets to be a problem.  Popping up at 3 am like a shot and babbling to the wife about my new carry look ahead (which all look identical to her).  

It'll be nice sharing schems with you, once I've made some. and I'm quite looking forward to seeing your random number generator in action cos that looks pretty cool I've always wanted to understand electronics and this looks like the perfect way to do it - ie virtually, in software, rather than with real chips and circuitboards... cheaper that way and more scope I'd guess - and I also enjoy logic puzzles and this I'm sure will be kind of like that, but I'll be learning something, and hopefully a lot, in the process

It's definitely cheaper, lol.  I cant hand solder to save my life......so I end up wasting some money anytime I want to do anything in the real world.  I always had a wave soldering vat, right next to my unsecured ammonia etcher......lol, which was adjacent to the hot oil bath and the molten lead air knife (which was operated with oven mitts...with roosters on them).    

QC people though, impressive hand solderers.  Got into it when I was a minor, in a factory full of political refugees from Laos.  Stepdad knew the owner since childhood, he'd been in charge of electroplating since the place opened it's doors and ten bucks an hour was a princely sum (the minimum wage wasn't even 5 then).  It was very important to me, and to mine..me and my stapdad worked in the same place, everything we (my mom, my sister and my brother) had came from PCB's and Jims little shop.  To say I dream in binary is putting it lightly, it's the context of my childhood and early adulthood. It kept me from being a poor beach bum not once, but twice.

We did rapid prototyping.  So...if you ever come up with a badass NN, and you think you may want to actually build them for profit...remember that old rhythm here is acquainted, from the bottom all the way up to line management, with small proto houses and global industry leaders in making your digital dreams come true....lol.  I also still have my security clearance, DoD contracts ftw. You'll need somebody to crack the whip while you sit in your office and count your filthy lucre, like Ole Jim. Last time I could make any money in the industry was a decade ago, running Q-Logic, Cisco, and DoD Avionics lines for Jabil. Hell, if your NN was accidentally good at being a credit card reader...you could be sitting on millions, lol. Just need a proto.......

@Benny.

That's because the ability of a system to express the functions of boolean operations is what counts, not the manner in which it arrives at them (even if that manner is entirely chance). If "chaos" is fueling the comp the assemblies are no more or less logic gates than any other. Machine logic is not "logical" in the way we normally take the word to mean. It really is just a series of reference to brute facts of existence and interaction.

You probably think..that the mind/brain cannot be modeled in some particular type of logic gate....and I can see why you would think so, but it's a law of comp principle that any comp system can be built by repitition of just one universal gate in -any- implementation. Building the system that way won't guarantee identical operation, though. I think that neurons are more powerful than the digital or analog gates you might find in any of your devices, and I think that "mind" depends upon structures that are as robust as neurons, far more robust than our current machine architectures. It's unlikely that we're built like a tablet pc, or an old cell phone. I've told you many times, comp explains the principles leveraged..the implementation is the real kicker.

If mind is -doing- comp..even if that's not all mind is...if comp cant fully explain mind... it -still- has logic gates in it, it uses comp, if it didn't.......it couldn't comp. They don't -have- to built like any gate you are familiar with, or I am familiar with, but it would be damned nice of them if they were, so we could learn about them a little easier. The principles of comp however (so inconvenient above), anticipate the existence or possible construction of gates to which we are currently ignorant. They would work, but we don't know how to make them, or they do work..and we're not -entirely- sure how. I suppose, in a nutshell, I'm proposing the neurons represent the existence of just such a gate, or gate assembly.

[bennyboy]

@Benny.  

That's because the ability of a system to express the functions of boolean operations is what counts, not the manner in which it arrives at them (even if that manner is entirely chance).  If "chaos" is fueling the comp the assemblies are no more or less logic gates than any other.  You probably think..that the mind/brain cannot be modeled in some particular type of logic gate....and I can see why you would think so, but it's a law of comp principle that any comp system can be built by repitition of  just one universal gate in -any- implementation.  I think that neurons are more powerful than the digital or analog gates you might find in any of your devices.  It's unlikely that we're built like a tablet pc, or an old cell phone.

Given what we know about NTs, hormones, and the chemistry of neurons that Emjay pretty well summarized, it seems to me that there are brain parts and systems (or even local neuronal pathways) that do either or both. Obviously, if I ask "Is this thing a pen?" at some point there's going to be a gate, at least an implied one, since a boolean answer is expected: the inputs being "pen-ness" and a symbolic representation of an object.

[The Grand Nudger]

I've told you many times that we both think mind is done the same  way, we just disagree as to what stuff is doing it, haven't I?

[emjay]

Yeah, not necessarily break but just drastically alter its functioning. I wonder now too if epileptic fits might be that sort of wave effect, and if so it's not a good thing. As for spiritual experiences, have you had any? Or what you'd liken to them? Ie in meditation. I haven't had any experiences that I would deem spiritual so I can't relate to it. But expert practitioners of meditation can 'quiet' the mind and experience all sorts of weird stuff.

Yes, I've had several major events in my life under a variety of conditions: a couple times in meditation, a couple times when fasting and reading the Bible, a couple times under the effects of LSD, at least one time caused by strobing lights, and a couple times while getting deep into philosophy and physics-- especially when i deeply pondered things like QM, entanglement, etc.  I've had 3 or 4 real lucid dreams and a cople out of body experiments, as well.

I would call them "spiritual" in the sense that I know they are the kind of experience that spirtual-minded people often talk to.  But not in the sense that I believe they are a product of any spiritual activity.

The only one of those I can relate to are lucid dreams, because I've had plenty of those, but not for a long time, much to my annoyance because they were some of the best experiences of my life And with meditation I get into it... I see the benefit and don't want it to end no matter how bored I may feel at times... just letting that boredom drift through... so I can do it for about an hour and be glad I did, but I haven't experienced anything 'transcendental' with it... though the sense of the passage of time is pretty cool... aware of every little noise and how it passes and is forgotten. Stuff like that.

Anyway wow... I'd love to be in your head I can't imagine having a 'spiritual' experience just from thinking about philosophy... all it does for me is give me a headache I guess you get really into it in a zoned out kinda way? And the most I've ever had drugs-wise is a bit of weed... which admittedly did have some cool effects, like hyper-awareness... similar to the meditation... and something that I can only liken to goldfish memory... walking home from the pub and forgetting where I'd come from every few steps. So what's an LSD trip like? And the out of body experience? Is that the same thing as 'dissociation'... as apparently occurs in extreme pain etc... do you really see yourself from a different perspective? As if your eyes are no longer in your head and you can actually see yourself head on?

...and that the difference between a human brain and any other mammalian brain is not the number of layers, but the number of columns. So the human brain has drastically more columns than any other animal brain, but the form of those columns is roughly the same in all mammals. So to the question of what would happen if you remove neurons one at a time, I'd say it depends where you remove them from, so if it was removing columns at a time in the cerebral cortex, I think the effect would be to reduce the representational space, and thus the complexity of the associations and the information processing that was possible.

When you talk about representation "space," I believe you mean simply capacity, and are not making references to qualia, to homunculi, to stages or screens or anything like that, right?

No, just capacity... but in a kind of exponential way. So not capacity in the sense of a few more megabytes of RAM in a computer, but in a combinational sense. In the sense that presumably each representation can be associated with any other.

It's fascinating and I really want to start understanding this structure intimately. The question is, am I willing to spend 75 quid on a book called Cerebral Cortex: Architecture, Connections, and the Dual Origin Concept? It's so tempting because my problem at the moment is I understand the principles and network dynamics of a generic network of that type and arrangement but I don't know much about the structure of specific brain areas. Maybe it's about time I did?  

I don't think you need to spend money every time you want to learn.  Googling "cerebral architecture" yielded what seem to be plenty of interesting results.

That's my problem really... I'm a sucker for books... I like them because they're solid, reliable, and don't change. A previous employer told me 'Google is your friend' and that, especially in the computing world, I shouldn't rely on books too much because technology moves so fast they quickly get out of date. But it never really sunk in and given the choice I'd always prefer a book. That said, I did Google cerebral columns earlier and did find some interesting pages, so I do see the value. It's just I like books more.

[emjay]

I'm guessing you probably dream in binary right? I'd like to too...

It gets to be a problem.  Popping up at 3 am like a shot and babbling to the wife about my new carry look ahead (which all look identical to her).  

It'll be nice sharing schems with you, once I've made some. and I'm quite looking forward to seeing your random number generator in action cos that looks pretty cool I've always wanted to understand electronics and this looks like the perfect way to do it - ie virtually, in software, rather than with real chips and circuitboards... cheaper that way and more scope I'd guess - and I also enjoy logic puzzles and this I'm sure will be kind of like that, but I'll be learning something, and hopefully a lot, in the process

It's definitely cheaper, lol.  I cant hand solder to save my life......so I end up wasting some money anytime I want to do anything in the real world.  I always had a wave soldering vat, right next to my unsecured ammonia etcher......lol, which was adjacent to the hot oil bath and the molten lead air knife (which was operated with oven mitts...with roosters on them).    

QC people though, impressive hand solderers.  Got into it when I was a minor, in a factory full of political refugees from Laos.  Stepdad knew the owner since childhood, he'd been in charge of electroplating since the place opened it's doors and ten bucks an hour was a princely sum (the minimum wage wasn't even 5 then).  It was very important to me, and to mine..me and my stapdad worked in the same place, everything we (my mom, my sister and my brother) had came from PCB's and Jims little shop.  To say I dream in binary is putting it lightly, it's the context of my childhood and early adulthood.  It kept me from being a poor beach bum not once, but twice.

We did rapid prototyping.  So...if you ever come up with a badass NN, and you think you may want to actually build them for profit...remember that old rhythm here is acquainted, from the bottom all the way up to line management, with small proto houses and global industry leaders in making your digital dreams come true....lol.  I also still have my security clearance, DoD contracts ftw.  You'll need somebody to crack the whip while you sit in your office and count your filthy lucre, like Ole Jim.  Last time I could make any money in the industry was a decade ago, running Q-Logic, Cisco, and DoD Avionics lines for Jabil.  Hell, if your NN was accidentally good at being a credit card reader...you could be sitting on millions, lol.  Just need a proto.......

Yeah, I understand it. It's your whole life, and always has been

Don't worry, there's no way I could ever forget you man... I'll always have Rhythm in my soul So if that ever comes to pass you'll be the first person I call, but at the moment at least, my only interest in NNs is in explaining the brain... and it's still quite a big leap for me, and new territory, to visualise one being made out of logic gates. But hopefully the more I get into this, the more possibilities I'll see, and then a simulated or at least approximated neuron might not seem too big a leap. In any case I'm going to enjoy sharing my ideas with you and you sharing yours with me

[Catholic_Lady]

I've told you many times that we both think mind is done the same  way, we just disagree as to what stuff is doing it, haven't I?

I sense great fear in you. 

Open your heart, Rhythm, and the spirit shall lead you to eternity...

[Angrboda]

Oh gnoes! Thread overspill.

[Catholic_Lady]

Jor, is that you? You're beautiful.

[emjay]

What the hell's going on? CL, are you in Halloween mode again? And what's thread overspill?