[HN Gopher] OpenWorm
___________________________________________________________________
OpenWorm
Author : 9woc
Score : 242 points
Date : 2021-10-30 01:19 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| moyix wrote:
| Over at LessWrong niconiconi recently posted a somewhat
| pessimistic assessment of the last 10 years of progress on
| emulating C. Elegans, including OpenWorm:
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mHqQxwKuzZS69CXX5/whole-brai...
|
| Apparently there are some signs that progress is being made again
| now, though...
| kaijia wrote:
| Recently I looked into this subject and talked with a postdoc
| researcher. It is interesting to see this discussion on HN.
|
| C elegans is far more complicated than the connectome
| abstraction used in these projects. There are all kinds of ion
| channels, including new ones recently discovered
| (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34388373/ ), that are
| regulated by genes and other physical/biochemical factors in
| the body that are very poorly understood. We only have slightly
| better understanding of its brain development recently (
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03778-8 ). The in
| vivo research on C. elegans neural system mostly uses the
| concentration of Ca+ as the neuron activity indicator, which
| lefts out other details.
|
| According to the postdoc that I talked with, we are still very
| very far from even accurately understanding a single neuron,
| let alone simulating any neural network completely.
|
| Edit: typo
| nabla9 wrote:
| C. Elegans is the perfect first candidate for understanding the
| whole brain of some animal.
|
| It doesn't even have spiking neurons. Whole Brain Emulation of
| merely 302 neurons would not be that hard if we understood how
| worm brain and neurons work.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| What if neurons aren't the only component of a neurological
| system that we need to be tracking, and we're not aware of
| that fact?
| flatiron wrote:
| Then that would be exposed as part of this effort and they
| can go figure out what else to track.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Would it? It seems openworm has been struggling to work
| for a long time. How confident are we that the answer is
| just more effort?
| w1nk wrote:
| Where else do you imagine the answer would come from?
| neatze wrote:
| > It doesn't even have spiking neurons.
|
| What do you mean ?
|
| If I recall correctly there was one hobbyist who used
| Hodgkin-Huxley neurons to emulate movement of warm, it
| actually trivial task.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Consider the difference between:
|
| Replicating limited outward behaviour with simplified
| neuron model.
|
| vs.
|
| Fully simulating the functioning of the neuron so that it
| does not replicate some observed behaviors, but simulates
| the brain function accurately at the neuron level.
|
| An elegant mind: Learning and memory in Caenorhabditis
| elegans http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/17/4/191.long
| neatze wrote:
| Hodgkin-Huxley neurons are fully functioning neurons as
| far my understanding goes, furthermore, if not mistaken
| openwarm simulator has ability to simulate hydrodynamics
| on cellular levels.
| praveen9920 wrote:
| There is a TED talk about the same
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY2-0-QsuTE&ab_channel=TEDxT...
| jarrell_mark wrote:
| Here's OpenWorm controlling a robot :
| https://youtu.be/YWQnzylhgHc?t=31
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I see there are also very interesting inputs in previous
| discussions:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8949408 - Jan 2015
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8745251 - Dec 2014 (OpenWorm
| in Lego)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613732 - Apr 2014
| chrisallick wrote:
| at first glance i thought this would be an opensource virus.
| which is a fun idea because as its updated it inspires people to
| patch their code. or an opensource virus that patches
| vulnerabilities is also fun.
| tux3 wrote:
| You may be interested in meterpreter and the metasploit
| framework.
|
| It's not an actual worm or virus, because that'd be a little
| silly, but from automated exploits and a good reverse shell
| that's a small epsilon away from what you're describing.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I thought it's a clone of classic video game, Worms.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms_(1995_video_game)
| baq wrote:
| I imagine trademark lawyers would deal with that name pretty
| quickly. But, there are other cute animals which would look
| good blowing themselves up with bazookas, like hedgehogs.
|
| https://www.hedgewars.org/
| agys wrote:
| I love this project and I love its name even more...!
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Not entirely related, I wonder if they have simulations out there
| for the primordial soup and accelerating it (evolution) so that
| it hopefully gets to a human brain.
| p1mrx wrote:
| The primordial soup was presumably an Earth-scale massively
| parallel chemical "computation" with no goal. How would you
| even begin to simulate that? We at least know roughly what a
| worm does.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Yeah idk, the compounds, basic laws of physics, let time
| accelerate quickly in many iterations.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| This is reeeeeaaaaalllllly hard. Remember that protein
| folding was unsolved five years ago. (I'm not an expert at
| all, and I can't make a ruling on whether AlphaFold is now
| generally considered a "solution".) Protein folding is just
| one small part of physics.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Yeah I'm not saying it's easy, I know I can't do it now
| haha. I'm a JS kiddie myself, still have yet to get into
| this kind of stuff like making a basic 3D simulation,
| best I got to is 3JS at this time. I'm working on it when
| I have time.
|
| I watched some protein folding stuff from the Comma AI
| guy I didn't even know what was going on there but it
| looked cool.
|
| But we do have computation readily available, my 3060 is
| just sitting there while I sleep, I could do some things
| with it maybe. Granted it's not a super computer, lower
| end.
| joeberon wrote:
| > But we do have computation readily available, my 3060
| is just sitting there while I sleep
|
| You have vastly overestimated the power of your 3060 if
| you think it can simulate all the Earth's atoms at the
| beginning of life here.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| I would instead call this "vastly underestimating the
| complexity of physics". Again, protein folding is a tiny
| tiny subset of physics and is famously extremely
| computationally difficult.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Back in my day they put men on the moon on some tubes /s.
| Yeah I get it, just a what if though, but good to know
| not easy.
|
| At some point I will get the time though and dive into
| it, learn new things. One time I didn't have a job for
| several months that was great.
| joeberon wrote:
| We can't even simulate the dynamics of a simple atomic
| system in an exact way, without making assumptions. The
| universe is that but with many many more atoms and
| complicated couplings. The universe is much more powerful
| of a simulation than any computer can ever be. Even if you
| used a quantum computer you'd need as many qubits as that
| original primordial soup.
|
| Our computers are not more powerful than the "computer of
| the Universe", they are much _much_ less powerful.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| I have heard of that saying before with regard to atoms
| in the universe, I think in context of brute forcing but
| yeah. Good info
| brap wrote:
| I always thought it would be much less interesting to simulate a
| worm on a cellular level, and much more interesting to simulate
| some single-cell organism on an atomic or even subatomic level.
| The latter feels more like "real life", IMO.
|
| I don't know which one is more difficult, though.
|
| Lots of interesting ethical questions. In the future we might be
| able to simulate a human on that level. Is it really alive? Does
| it have rights? If we can "scan" someone and simulate them
| virtually, are they the same person? If the physical body dies
| but there's still a digital copy, can we say they're still alive?
| tata71 wrote:
| > If we can "scan" someone and simulate them virtually, are
| they the same person? If the physical body dies but there's
| still a digital copy, can we say they're still alive?
|
| On what grounds?
| brap wrote:
| Well, they would be (in theory) indistinguishable from the
| physical person. You'd be able to interact with them, and
| their thoughts, feelings, memories etc would all still be
| there. In many ways the "soul" is still there. Obviously this
| is very much a matter of opinion.
| tata71 wrote:
| I think the legal theory of personhood has nothing to do
| with successfully _recreating_ interacting with that
| person.
| ncmncm wrote:
| At the absolute best, you have a poor copy of the person.
|
| We have had examples of poor copies forever. We call them
| twins. If you have a twin, that twin isn't you, and you're
| not them.
|
| The most interchangeable your copy could be with you would be
| that the copy might be able to log into and post from your
| online accounts and fool many of your followers, if you have
| any; or to withdraw your money from your bank account and buy
| the sort of things you might have bought _if you still had
| the money_.
| karmanyaahm wrote:
| > In the future we might be able to simulate a human on that
| level. Is it really alive? Does it have rights?
|
| Purely probabilistically, we are such humans. If any 'base'
| universe can easily simulate humans, for fun or research, such
| simulations will soon vastly outnumber the 'real' people. And
| because of that, we have to assume we are in an ancestor
| simulation.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I really disagree with the fundamental assumption there.
|
| I find it very difficult to believe that a base universe
| could ever simulate something of the complexity of our
| universe without massive and pointless expense, at best. And
| even if they could, I find it even more unlikely that
| simulated universes would ever even be dense in the subset of
| multiverses (whichever flavor your like) which contain
| something like humans.
| brap wrote:
| I agree, and additionally, it might take an awful lot of
| time until a civilization is advanced enough to reach the
| point where it can simulate other beings. For all we know,
| we can be the first beings to ever reach this point.
| thih9 wrote:
| I find this concept fascinating.
|
| > While our ultimate goal is to simulate every [worm] cell in C.
| elegans, we are starting out by building a model of its body, its
| nervous system, and its environment. (...) To get a quick idea of
| what this looks like, check out the latest movie:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaovWiZJUWY
|
| Source: https://docs.openworm.org/projects
|
| Also: the "latest video" is seven years old now, does anyone have
| a newer demo?
| 542458 wrote:
| There's a three year old (low quality) video here.
|
| https://youtu.be/M0rpT831ngM
| tantalor wrote:
| So it's just simulating the physical model? That's a rather
| narrow slice of the whole thing.
|
| Edit: the real website mentions a lot more like the neural
| connections
|
| https://openworm.org/
| mshroyer wrote:
| It seems likely I'm misunderstanding something, or are you
| suggesting that C. elegans has a soul?
| meowface wrote:
| On that topic: it can't necessarily be ruled out that they
| might have a soul. (In the sense of possessing
| consciousness.) Less likely the fewer degrees of freedom
| you have, and certainly seems like a long shot for ~300
| neurons, but we don't know where the lines may be drawn and
| we may not know for a very long time.
| IshKebab wrote:
| A soul is not simply consciousness. A soul usually means
| some non-physical entity that can exist independently
| from the physical body (e.g. when you die).
|
| Pure nonsense of course.
| joeberon wrote:
| How do you know it is pure nonsense? We actually have no
| scientific evidence either way. There is a reason why
| discussing the "hard problem of consciousness" is so
| popular. There are many people now advocating for a
| universal consciousness, i.e. that all space time has
| intrinsically a mind-like element that is merely "tapped
| into" by physical bodies.
|
| It's foolish to pretend that it's a solved problem when
| it's not. At the present moment we don't actually have a
| solid idea either way.
| colemannugent wrote:
| >We actually have no scientific evidence either way.
|
| That's how we know it's nonsense. When there's no
| evidence for something it doesn't mean that it's 50%
| Likely to be true.
|
| If I told you there's a dragon in my garage you should
| immediately think that I'm lying because you've never
| seen any prior evidence of dragons anywhere.
|
| Mathematically, things with no evidence for their
| existence don't exist.
| joeberon wrote:
| Right but the idea that there are aspects of our minds
| that don't exist within this physical universe is not
| outlandish or bizarre, it's a very reasonable and
| historically defended position.
|
| EDIT: Also not sure what this bizarre statement is:
|
| > Mathematically, things with no evidence for their
| existence don't exist.
|
| 1. How is that related to mathematics? Can you provide a
| theorem or some definitions here?
|
| 2. How is evidence related to mathematics?
|
| 3. Why is mathematics relevant when talking about whether
| or not our mind has non-physical aspects?
| colemannugent wrote:
| >...the idea that there are aspects of our minds that
| don't exist within this physical universe is not
| outlandish or bizarre...
|
| That's where we disagree. Can you give me an example of
| anything that doesn't exist within this physical
| universe? I'm not familiar with the concept of a "thing"
| that isn't physical.
|
| Sorry about being confusing with the last sentence. I'll
| try and address your questions:
|
| 1. When we talk about the likelihood of something being
| true we are now discussing probabilities, which have a
| long and well proven track record of obeying the laws of
| statistics. Statistics are quite often counter-intuitive
| and our brains don't think in terms of the math that
| governs the actual outcomes
|
| A good example is the birthday problem [1]. Imagine we
| had a room full of people and we wanted to know what the
| odds are that two of those people in the room had the
| same birthday. Obviously the more people we have, the
| more likely we are to have a match, but how many people
| do you need to get to that point?
|
| It turns out that with just 23 people in the room there's
| a 50% chance of two people having the same birthday. Most
| people's intuition leads them to believe that for 50%
| you'd need 365/2 = 182.5 people, but once there's 70
| people in a room, you're almost certain to have a match
| with a probability of 99.9%. This is a good example of a
| case where not knowing the math will lead your
| predictions of the world to be incorrect.
|
| 2. When we discuss evidence we are trying to figure out
| the probability of something, thus the rules of
| probabilities apply. One of the fundamental theorems of
| statistics is Bayes' Theorem [2], which at its core tells
| you how to calculate the probability of an event given
| another event.
|
| To motivate that, here's a more realistic example: "A
| patient goes to see a doctor. The doctor performs a test
| with 99 percent reliability--that is, 99 percent of
| people who are sick test positive and 99 percent of the
| healthy people test negative. The doctor knows that only
| 1 percent of the people in the country are sick. Now the
| question is: if the patient tests positive, what are the
| chances the patient is sick?"
|
| If you answered 99% then you'd not only be wrong, but
| you'd have misdiagnosed your patient. The correct answer
| here is 50% [3].
|
| 3. To bring it all together: to properly know things one
| must understand the laws of mathematics. This applies not
| just to problems that obviously involve probabilities,
| but everything in general.
|
| At it's core, I think our disagreement revolves around
| this idea of non-physicality and the belief that there
| are things that aren't governed by mathematics.
| Everything is physical and obeys the laws of physics
| which themselves are governed by the laws of mathematics.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes'_theorem
|
| [3] https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-
| modules/bs/bs704_probabi...
| joeberon wrote:
| Is "mathematics" a thing in our physical universe? Many
| people argue it's an abstract set of constructions with
| no physical reality in themselves. Sounds kind of
| outlandish and bizarre according to your criteria.
|
| > Everything is physical and obeys the laws of physics
| which themselves are governed by the laws of mathematics.
|
| If you define "physical" to mean "literally everything"
| then of course having something outside of Physics is
| logically impossible. That is a different definition to
| the work "physical" that we are working with in terms of
| the mind. In that case "physical" doesn't mean "literally
| everything" but rather more like "those things that
| correspond to an external, verifiable, objective
| reality". For you, ideas and concepts would be considered
| physical, but that is not the case for the definition of
| "physical" I mentioned, which is far more common in both
| religion and philosophy.
|
| In this case we would say that ideas and concepts are not
| physical. So an easy answer to your question "Can you
| give me an example of anything that doesn't exist within
| this physical universe? I'm not familiar with the concept
| of a "thing" that isn't physical." would be literally any
| concept or idea. However since you have a universalist
| (and thus totally useless) definition of "physical", of
| course it is impossible for me to argue that there is
| anything outside of that.
|
| PS. As a doctor in quantum physics myself, I can tell you
| that statistics and probability is certainly a way of
| _modelling_ outcomes, and not in any way considered a
| fundamental element of reality.
| colemannugent wrote:
| I'm afraid I still don't understand. Are you arguing that
| there is some utility in considering "concepts or ideas"
| non-physical from an ontological perspective? Because I
| think we both agree they're solidly physical in the sense
| that a "thought" can be reduced to chemical signaling.
|
| On the QM side, I'm pretty sure that you're incorrect in
| your postscript. It was my understanding that certain
| physical processes can only be understood though
| probability and that talking in terms of wavefunctions is
| the most correct way to do that.
| joeberon wrote:
| > Because I think we both agree they're solidly physical
| in the sense that a "thought" can be reduced to chemical
| signaling.
|
| I don't agree with that. I think there is an inseparable
| spiritual element that justifies the subjective
| experience.
|
| For the QM part, that still does not mean that
| ontologically the probabilities have a physical reality.
| Google "interpretations of quantum mechanics", we have
| very little idea of what quantum mechanics actually means
| yet. We can set up the problems and do the maths but no
| one even knows what exactly it means to do a measurement
| (again Google "measurement problem"). I am an expert in
| quantum mechanics (it is my job) so I would be happy to
| answer questions about it in the morning.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I think you're getting mixed up. Consciousness is
| obviously real (because we directly experience it) and is
| a hard problem because it's so weird.
|
| _The soul_ is not obviously real. There 's zero evidence
| for it. It's just some random hypothesis that doesn't
| even explain anything. It's like reincarnation. Just a
| nice idea that someone made up with zero evidence, no
| mechanism and no use. Clearly nonsense.
| mshroyer wrote:
| I'm noncommittal toward the prospect that a C. elegans
| might be conscious (though I doubt it). But here I was
| using "soul" to mean something metaphysical, requiring
| something beyond the physical configuration of those ~300
| neurons to explain.
| joeberon wrote:
| It's impossible to really rule out such a thing but at
| the same time I don't think there's any way we can
| understand how to actually simulate or even identify
| that.
| BarryMilo wrote:
| Worm soul would be a good name for a band though.
| dunefox wrote:
| Worm Soul - Shai Hulud
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I think they're talking about just the worm moving, rather
| than also simulating the worm's CNS/mind.
| tantalor wrote:
| I mean simulating muscle contractions treats it like a
| clockwork machine; that's not very impressive. If you go
| deeper you can look at internals of cells, metabolism,
| chemical energy, protein interactions. That's how the worm
| works.
|
| This is like simulating a computer by using a model of RAM
| and CPU, when you really need to model electricity &
| magnetism (and stray gamma rays) for a true simulation.
| mshroyer wrote:
| Ah I see... so it sounds like I misunderstood. You're
| calling for a higher-fidelity physical model, not
| something metaphysical :)
|
| I still think it's impressive if we can get a decent-
| fidelity model of C. elegans behavior at the project's
| current level of abstraction.
|
| I wonder how much behavioral difference we'd see from a
| lower level of simulation? After all, you can do a lot
| with a "RAM and CPU" level simulation of a computer...
| byteofmydream wrote:
| And sometimes it's enough to simulate on the level of
| api's to get same results
| koziserek wrote:
| But.. Do you need electrons and gamma ray model to
| simulate fully your old Amiga games on PC?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I think the example is not great. The problem is not that
| we could be doing better, but rather that without a more
| granular view, the model will simply not work.
|
| More like trying to model the pixels on a screen without
| accessing the underlying program that's making decisions
| on what to show.
| Nezghul wrote:
| There are fields, Neo, endless fields where worms are no longer
| born...
| sgtnasty wrote:
| This is how the TechnoCore got started.
| mshroyer wrote:
| Does this freak anyone else out just a little?
|
| This project is simulating an entire organism, including its
| neurology. To what extent does running this code create a "real"
| worm?
|
| Sure, it's just C. elegans for now. But over time, we'll
| gradually see additional projects to simulate larger organisms...
| scollet wrote:
| It's not that freaky for me. I think it's awesome!
| sho_hn wrote:
| Reminds me of this short fiction: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Oooh, that was awesome.
| mshroyer wrote:
| I hadn't run across that story before, so thanks for
| sharing it.
| _Microft wrote:
| If you liked that, you might enjoy the Bobiverse series by
| Dennis E. Taylor.
|
| http://dennisetaylor.org/
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-
| legion-w...
| tectonic wrote:
| The Bobiverse is great.
| tlavoie wrote:
| Or the novel, "Permutation City", by Greg Egan. https://w
| ww.goodreads.com/book/show/156784.Permutation_City
| mshroyer wrote:
| Oh I think it's an awesome project, too. It's just that it
| sort of makes concrete what were previously hypothetical
| arguments about simulating living beings.
|
| I can't bring myself to care much about a C. elegans, but
| let's say we scale this up enough to simulate something the
| size of a dog plus its environment. Presumably it has
| subjective experience, like a real dog? What are the ethics
| of writing code that would result in its "suffering"?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "What are the ethics of writing code that would result in
| its "suffering"? "
|
| I doubt that code can suffer. We do not understand feelings
| enough and this might help to understand it eventually -
| but for now I see no reason to assume that they can
| recreated digitally.
|
| And I am much more worried, about many real life beings
| that suffer in our food chain and co.
| mshroyer wrote:
| Why would we assume subjective experience _can 't_ be
| recreated digitally?
|
| Inert "code" can't suffer, of course. But assuming we
| accept the materialistic view, what reason do we have to
| believe that a mind in a simulated body has any less
| subjective experience than a mind in a "real" body?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "what reason do we have to believe that a mind in a
| simulated body has any less subjective experience than a
| mind in a "real" body? "
|
| That reality is seemingly indefinitely complex and any
| simulation we have, very simplifying. I am pretty sure,
| for emotions and co, it takes a bit more sophisticated
| simulation - if it can be achieved digitally, at all.
| scollet wrote:
| Thanks for spurring this thread. This has been pretty
| great.
| userbinator wrote:
| _What are the ethics of writing code that would result in
| its "suffering"?_
|
| Do you have the same concerns about other, perhaps much
| simpler but also virtual and pseudointelligent entities,
| such as computer-controlled players in games?
|
| It does raise some deeply philosophical questions about
| life and what it means in general.
| mshroyer wrote:
| > computer-controlled players in games?
|
| Nah, I'm not particularly worried about that. Because
| those are all currently based on models too simple to
| conceivably have anything like consciousness.
|
| On the other hand, once we can simulate a human and its
| environment at OpenWorm's targeted level of abstraction,
| presumably we would have a conscious being there?
| reuben364 wrote:
| The only consciousness we experience is our own. In the
| extreme, we can no more say a chair suffers than a human
| being other than ourselves. Of course we take the
| pragmatic approach of deciding things that look like
| suffering to us is suffering.
| mshroyer wrote:
| I strongly disagree. The human brain, in its connectome,
| encompasses enough computational complexity to contain
| consciousness and suffering. A chair does not, at least
| not based on any model I've yet seen proposed.
| scollet wrote:
| I think a chair does, in it's full life cycle.
| mshroyer wrote:
| How, exactly?
| reuben364 wrote:
| And on what basis do you claim that computational
| complexity is a necessary condition for consciousness and
| suffering? There is only one datum you have for
| consciousness. Other people can tell you that they
| experience consciousness, but so can a Text-to-Speech
| program
| handol wrote:
| Would you believe that a text-to-speech program was
| suffering if it told you so?
| reuben364 wrote:
| > Of course we take the pragmatic approach of deciding
| things that look like suffering to us is suffering.
|
| Hence why I said this. There is nothing you can use to
| believe a human's claims over the text-to-speech's
| claims, so we choose what looks like suffering to us.
| However, my point is that it is an arbitrary choice.
| pjerem wrote:
| > There is nothing you can use to believe a human's
| claims over the text-to-speech's claims
|
| Of course there is. The human facing me looks similar to
| me so I can interpolate its claims with my own experience
| of being an human.
|
| I thinks it's also for the same reason that we have
| variable degrees of empathy against animals : the more
| the animal looks like us (that can be size, number of
| members, physically, in terms of effective
| communication...), the more, on average, we have empathy
| for them.
|
| This can go to the extent that people commonly feel <<
| something >> about their cars and their human-face-like
| designs combined with their single ability to move.
| reuben364 wrote:
| Yes, but this is arbitrary. That is my point. There's no
| reason to believe that you can extrapolate your own
| subjective experience to others based on their similarity
| to you.
| ImStuckInTime wrote:
| > However, my point is that it is an arbitrary choice.
|
| It does not have to be arbitrary though. We could go by
| the Turing test. If some text-to-speech could clear it i
| would believe what it said.
| reuben364 wrote:
| But you are choosing to use the Turing test, which tests
| a form of intelligence, as a proxy to determine whether
| to believe the claim. A Turing test does not preclude
| philosophical zombies. It does not demonstrate anything
| about consciousness.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
| stefan_ wrote:
| Don't worry, it doesn't work.
| mshroyer wrote:
| In what sense does it not work?
| andai wrote:
| The state of the art is described in this blog post (shared
| by moyix above):
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mHqQxwKuzZS69CXX5/whole-
| brai...
|
| Basically, while the structure of the network has been
| known for decades, they don't yet have the technology to
| figure out how the neurons behave (the weights of the
| neurons) nor how they learn (changes in the weights), so
| they can't "upload" data from a real worm.
| taneq wrote:
| This is why I roll my eyes when people say we understand
| the human brain. We don't even fully understand what
| individual neurons are doing.
| omnicognate wrote:
| I'm not an expert in anything relevant to this, so this
| is ill-informed speculation.
|
| But isn't referring to not knowing "the weights" (as the
| article and researchers do) making a rather large
| assumption about the nature of the problem? It sounds
| more like the researchers don't know "why the neurons
| fire when they do", which would leave open the question
| of whether "weights" is even a sufficient model.
| tantalor wrote:
| This video is a better look at what they're doing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaCRNX0hdwU
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