Consciousness causes higher entropy compared to unconscious states in the human brain

[uncool]

Note: This may be observed as a continuation of my earlier thread (regarding entropy maximization and human purpose).

• Anyway, here's another newish article by another author: Scientists Show Human Consciousness Could Be a Side Effect of 'Entropy'
  
• Paper in article: https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.00821
  

I think this ties back with my earlier thread: (Why is the purpose of human life to create artificial general intelligence?).

The paper from the new article above says the more deep in sleep the mind, the lower the entropy.

The converse is true, the more awake the mind is, the higher the information content, the higher the amount of neuronal interactions, the higher the values of entropy.

The paper uses "Stirling Approximation" to compute some measure of entropy, "macrostate" C:


Figure 1 Stirling approximation on human EEG data

• I think it is reasonable to estimate that "C ∈ {X}", where "C "represents an ensemble or macrostate sequence about some distribution of entropy in human neuronal terms as underlined by Mateos et al in new article/paper above, while "{X}" (wrt equation 4 by Alex Wissner Gross) describes some macrostate partition that reasonably encompasses constrained path capability, that permits entropy maximization, as underlined by Dr. Alex Wissner Gross.
  

• Finally, beyond the scope of humans (as indicated by "C") one may additionally garner of some measure of "{X}" that may subsume higher degrees of entropy. (i.e. Artificial General Intelligence will likely have more brain power than humans, and hence a higher measure of "{X}" compared to humans.)
  

[Angrboda]

[Succubus]

Uncool that post is an ugly mess.
Why not post just one link with a brief synopsis. As for:

...Artificial General Intelligence will likely have more brain power than humans...

By brain power do you mean processing power? The machines ran off with that award many years ago. If you mean thought processing; forget it.
If you were to run all the worlds super computers in parallel you still have an adding machine, albeit a very fast one. For that adding machine to become a true artificial intelligence it needs some degree of self awareness, a consciousness and we are light years away. We need to fully understand how our consciousness works before we can program the machines with it.
It will happen, some day.

[vulcanlogician]

Actually, the article was kind of interesting, but slim on the details. I can't quite wrap my head around how consciousness might be a side effect of entropy, but its interesting to ponder. Below is what I thought was most informative out of the abstract:

 We find a surprisingly simple result: normal wakeful states are characterised by the greatest number of possible configurations of interactions between brain networks, representing highest entropy values. Therefore, the information content is larger in the network associated to conscious states, suggesting that consciousness could be the result of an optimization of information processing. These findings encapsulate three main current theories of cognition, as discussed in the text, and more specifically the conceptualization of consciousness in terms of brain complexity. We hope our study represents the preliminary attempt at finding organising principles of brain function that will help to guide in a more formal sense inquiry into how consciousness arises from the organization of matter.

I bolded what I thought was the main idea. It seems to be an attempt at a naturalistic solution to the mind/body problem.

[polymath257]

Several different points here.

1. Entropy provides an arrow for time, and all chemical reactions in the brain obey the second law of thermodynamics (the one involving entropy), so there is a sense in which entropy drives the brain (as it does everything else).

2. Yes, an active brain will have more complexity, and thereby more entropy than a passive brain. This doesn't mean entropy is the most relevant variable.

3. There have been studies that show that doing *less* work is more the key to intelligence than doing more. A schizophrenic's brain would likely have very high entropy, but that doens't make it a good thing.

Conclusion: to the extent this isn't obvious, it is irrelevant.

[vulcanlogician]

Several different points here.

1. Entropy provides an arrow for time, and all chemical reactions in the brain obey the second law of thermodynamics (the one involving entropy), so there is a sense in which entropy drives the brain (as it does everything else).

2. Yes, an active brain will have more complexity, and thereby more entropy than a passive brain. This doesn't mean entropy is the most relevant variable.

3. There have been studies that show that doing *less* work is more the key to intelligence than doing more. A schizophrenic's brain would likely have very high entropy, but that doens't make it a good thing.

Conclusion: to the extent this isn't obvious, it is irrelevant.

Granted, I'm not sure I entirely grasp what is being said in the study cited in the OP, Poly, but I think that the study concerns consciousness alone and not intelligence. So I don't see how #3 fits into it.

[GrandizerII]

One day, I'll understand all this advanced sciencey formulas and stuff, and I'll give an informed opinion on the matter.

[brewer]

How much entropy is there in an status epilepticus brain?

This thread seems pointless.

[polymath257]

OK, I looked at the original article (in arxiv.org) and there is even less there than I expected. MANY basic problems in this article.

First, there were only *9* people tested. There is NOTHING that can be done statistically with a study of 9 people. I could stop there, but the problems keep going.

They determined if different channels on EEGs were 'connected' by whether the correlations met a certain 'threshold', but that threshold was never given explicitly. Then, if the values exceeded that threshold, they were set to 1 and otherwise set to 0.

Next, they use an *incredibly* simplistic model for the 'complexity', essentially that of a binomial distribution. The problem is that such a distribution has only one parameter (in this case the number of correlated channels) and the characteristics are such that 'more entropy' simply means 'more connections active' (unless more than half of the channels are correlated).

So, their ultimate 'result' is that there are more active connections when someone is awake than when they are asleep or in a coma.

Since they use Shannon entropy instead of thermodynamic entropy, and since their actual model is so simplistic, the claim that entropy 'causes higher consciousness' is just not supported by this study.

TL;DR: Their experiment uses too few people, is based on a model that simply states people that are awake have more active brains.

The connection to entropy is, truthfully, completely bogus.

[Fireball]

OK, I looked at the original article (in arxiv.org) and there is even less there than I expected. MANY basic problems in this article.

First, there were only *9* people tested. There is NOTHING that can be done statistically with a study of 9 people. I could stop there, but the problems keep going.

They determined if different channels on EEGs were 'connected' by whether the correlations met a certain 'threshold', but that threshold was never given explicitly. Then, if the values exceeded that threshold, they were set to 1 and otherwise set to 0.

Next, they use an *incredibly* simplistic model for the 'complexity', essentially that of a binomial distribution. The problem is that such a distribution has only one parameter (in this case the number of correlated channels) and the characteristics are such that 'more entropy' simply means 'more connections active' (unless more than half of the channels are correlated).

So, their ultimate 'result' is that there are more active connections when someone is awake than when they are asleep or in a coma.

Since they use Shannon entropy instead of thermodynamic entropy, and since their actual model is so simplistic, the claim that entropy 'causes higher consciousness' is just not supported by this study.

TL;DR: Their experiment uses too few people, is based on a model that simply states people that are awake have more active brains.

The connection to entropy is, truthfully, completely bogus.

Looks like they have the cart before the horse- higher consciousness (or, at least an increased state of brain activity) would cause higher entropy.