<EIN SPERRIGER BLOG EINTRAG>

A while ago I posted about my hypothesis that our genes encode our genome in a certain fashion that resembles iterative function systems (IFSs) that converge towards a certain organism. The longer I watch my child grow up the more I’m convinced that that’s the case. I’m also more convinced than ever that staring at the genes themselves won’t let us discover the code of life. That is because we still haven’t discovered the language in which it is coded. It’s not that we can’t see it, we just can’t get to the semantics – we can’t understand what we’re looking at. But the what is the right thing. It’s like opening the car hood and staring at all the wires, when you’re not a car mechanic. You know the things in front of you propel the car, but you have no clue how that all works. And that is IMHO because we haven’t developed the correct mathematical foundations to decipher the code. It’s like Newton trying to solve differential equations without Laplace transformation. You can stare all day long at signals in the time domain – interestingly oscillating waveforms and never understand the underlying meaning of it. Transformed into the frequency domain (by means of Laplace transformation) these signals suddenly become very simple and easy to work with. Meaning arises. I use this analogy to ask for more progress in the field of fundamental math before we claim to be able to understand how the brain really works. And the brain unfolds itself in a long, slow growing process. This is IMHO based on IFSs. On a side note of hope, Newton was able to study and understand very basic differential equations in the time domain – so there’s hope. Keep staring at those genes! 🙂

My thoughts are a little unstructured, still, but I can see the story coming together. I’m convinced that we still need much more interdisciplinary research – even more than is already ongoing – to make progress in our understanding how the brain works.

All the ongoing efforts about building AI (either from nonlinear systems, or from replicating exactly what we see when we dissect the brain) are IMO futile and won’t lead to the real deal. In the best case it will lead to something that somewhat works,but we still won’t understand why. That’s why I believe we need to make progress in mathematics first for a real break through in comprehending inner workings of the brain. Of course one could argue that humans don’t ever need to understand the AI brains they create, as long as we build in the capabilities for the AI to replicate and evolve themselves – scary thought. Mankind would then never learn the secret of “life” despite having created the first non carbon based life form. Spinning that thought – if you’re a person who believes in God: did the Creator understand how the organisms that he created function, or did He just setup a system and let it be (and evolve – and evolving it does! Believe it or not). Does the Almighty have an understanding of the organisms He created? “Of course!” you will say as a Christian. But I can’t be so sure myself.

I personally believe that non-carbon AI (man made or not) is possible and that consciousness will eventually be able to be transferred/mapped to a different platform. IMO our bodies are just one thinkable form of an organism that can host life. The implications are big. If such a mapping can in fact take place new “borns” would no longer have to re-acquire the knowledge of the previous generation. It would come built in! It would accelerate development and it would accelerate evolution. It would create a knowledge explosion over only a couple of generations.

Another interesting observation is that compared to any man made information processing machines, the energy densities and signal speeds in human bodies are much much lower (multiple orders of magnitudes lower). Also carbon organisms come with a wealth of redundancy built in, something that man made information processing machines struggle with. Manmade machines are built for precise computations, not approximate estimations. Natural organisms appear to converge on a “PLAUSABLE’ solution, not necessarily the most exact one. But as long as the brain can live with that “local reality” it is accepted as truth. This approach makes an organism very resilient against disturbances and allows it to adapt. The overall theme is convergence towards a plausible stable state.That’s true for sensory input, thought process and even time perception.

I don’t know how to really conclude this post. I don’t think there’s a conclusion quite yet. But I know we’re still quite far away from an era where the knowledge of the human brain can live on in an artificial life form. It is exciting times we live in with accelerated technology leading the way. Until the next real break through though I have to settle for a iPhone 5. 😛