brain simulations

(this is a VERY random thought - more a wondering than a pondering!)

A major goal of technology has always been to emulate human behaviour, especially reasoning, and far from getting closer to a solution, our modern advances seem to simply reveal more and more how hard the problem really is.

One problem is we are looking for a 'design', and this requires first an understanding of what it should really do, and then how it should do that. But this is of course a 'top down' approach, whereas the thing we're trying to copy, the human brain, is the product of a 'bottom up' mechanism - the evolution of our species over millenia.

Ironically our 'higher level' conceptual approaches can't seem to match the mindless simplicity of the natural process. The reason being of course, that we are trying to produce the same 'work', and work is a product of power and time; we have the power, but nature had the time, and for the moment our power pales in comparison.

There are though two ways to achieve something - through planning, and through trial and error. In principle any method could be discovered by just trying out all the possibilities, and (within the limits imposed by 'adjacent possibilities') this is basically what happened during our evolution - over time multitudes of organisms of increasing complexity were thrown into the testing ground of the world, and slowly whittled down until just us were left.

Even for the simplest problems, we don't ever really have time (or inclination) to really apply trial and error, but we have a powerful substitute : computer simulation. It could be that since we don't fully understand what we are really trying to emulate from the off, then maybe a better approach would be to use simulations and then see if anything produced actually matches what we were looking for (our ignorance in understanding the brain then is out of the equation, since we might not know much about intelligence but we know what we like when we see it).

The question then is, is this feasible, and if so what would be involved?

What i'd be interested to know sometime, is if (and that's a big if) we had a model of an earth environment, and could model some basic creatures in it (we could cheat and start of with some primitive lifeforms we DO understand better) - then how many iterations would be needed to match the simulation runs performed by evolution?

There are admittedly many parameters involved - at the very least not just the number of generations (years/lifespan?) but also the number of relevant interactions (reproductions/terminations) per generation.
But surely there is a number which could be worked out,even from what we currently know about the history of the earth and biology?

And if so, then what is the number of computer operations, or the number of years for a computer running at 1GHz (1,000,000,000 operations per second) it would take to run?

And I don't even think it is a problem that nature basically ran one large simulation, but for a very long time : that large simulation (history) consisted of a multitude of smaller simulations in parallel. Of course there needs to be room for cumulative effect, but it is also probably the case that the starting points in nature (the number of relevant creatures) was initially small and it is in the 'cone' of development that the amounts mushroom.

My point is not really that this is a valid approach for modelling human behaviour, but it would be interesting to quantify just what sort of domain space is involved.

And of course, there is still that big IF of how to model the environment, but probably we could again take a leaf out of evolution's book and not model ourselves a complex environment, but allow complexity arise through the interaction of a sufficient number of simple models.

I know in areas like game theory such long running interactive simulations are used, but I must do some research to see what sort of sizes of runs are involved, and how the addition of parameters increases them.

I would just be interested to know what for example would happen if took some of the most powerful computers today and ran a simulation of some simple interacting evolving structure for say a year?

Nature didn't have the guns, but it sure had the numbers. My question is - how many?!

Voyager, and a badly stuffed bear, live on

It seems voyager is now about to leave our solar system, which is quite significant, even for this long range traveler. The point was made that when our sun eventually explodes, as it must, then even if there was any trace if humankind left on Earth, or any of our neighboring planets, then this would be obliterated at the very latest then, and the only traces of us which would remain would be whatever, like voyager, had managed to escape the solar system .

It's a sobering thought, but there is also some resolve and pride to be taken in the fact that, no matter what happens now, and even if human civilization has already peaked and goes into decline from now on, at least one artefact, one achievement, will live on. And even if it will never be found by anyone or any being which can recover it, it is fitting that the words of Carl Sagan are out there somewhere on that golden disc -from the man who realized we are all from star dust,a message will live on long after we've returned to it.

And this also reminded me of a nice little idea I have, which even if just a fantasy, is somehow comforting and pleasant, even if I can't properly articulate why: the notion that, for everything that happened (outside at least but given things like xrays then maybe not just) there is in theory, at all times, some point which would just then be reached at the speed of light from the event, and where, with a powerful enough telescope, that past event can now be seen unfolding. Think of any fond incident, like playing outside as a child, and in theory, if not in practice, it's "happening" again somewhere right now. Those moments, like voyager, are flying out forever into the universe, and in a small way, will never be lost.

It reminds me too of the end of the last Pooh bear book, “The House at
Pooh Corner”,in which the boy is leaving for school and takes his leave of the companions of his youth :

“But wherever they go , and whatever happens to them on the way ,in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing. ”

This never fails to bring a tear to my eye, since for me it encapsulates the transience of our youth , our lives ,our loves and joys . . . and yet , somehow also the hope that these things live on somehow.

And that we can feel this I think shows that it is not just the astronomical immortality that is involved. Whether Voyager might really physically outlive our sun is not really the point, more that we can have the notion and feeling that it could. Our special moments and achievements endure not just in the outer world but in the inner as well, forever reverberating around our minds, and in the minds of those with whom we share them with. Like voyager, or the image of a boy playing with his bear, they will always in some sense be "happening", sometime, somewhere.

Or, as Bogart might say, we will always have Paris...



Posted from phone via Blogaway (so excuse any typos!)