IUBio

Modelling the human brain by modelling its evolutionary emergence

Matt Jones jonesmat at physiology.wisc.edu
Mon Feb 25 16:18:48 EST 2002


uj797 at victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray) wrote in message news:<3c7a4307 at news.victoria.tc.ca>





> ATM/Mentifex:
> There is another project at http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/ 
> in which the ontogeny of the Robot AI Mind recapitulates
> the morphogenesis of the human central nervous system:
> 

bollocks.


> User Bio for Mentifex
> The plodding, low-skilled seed AI coder embedded as ATM
> in the Robot AI Mind source code which you may copy and
> Web-host, inserting your own geek DNA (initials & date)
> in the comment field of lines that you tweak or modules
> that you create and dnate in the immortal genome of AI.

more bollocks.


To illustrate the degree of bolloxity, consider the following quotes
from the
so-called "Theory" page number 5. These were not entirely randomly
selected; they are the first sentences leading into various
explanatory paragraphs. I reproduce them here as a service to nascent
AI-Brain/Mind Citizens everywhere. It is my great honor to act as an
instrument of your AI-Brain/Mind-Meme propagation!





"Each flow of information  is along  one of the dimensions of
the mind."

"Dimensionality  is the  quality  of  being  dimensional,  of
having  dimensions."

"Although the mind exists within the brain, the mind is not a
material,  physical being."

 "The first dimensional component of your mind is the straight
and linear record of its  sensory  input,  in  parallel  with the
straight  and  linear  "keyboard"  of its  motor  output."

"Your mind sits at one end of the loop  and contemplates your
environment  at the other end  of the loop."

(I didn't realize a loop had two ends...)

"It is critical to your comprehension of this mind-model that
you  think  of  the  sensory  and  motor  pathways  as flowing in 
parallel, but in opposite directions along the temporal dimension
of the mind."

"After the information in any one sensory pathway has reached
the brain  and  gone through all required feature-extraction, the 
information  enters  the  mind  by entering  the permanent memory
channel for that particular sensory modality. "

(I recall a Dr. Who episode where the Doctor has shrunk himself and
his sidekick down  and crawled inside a brain (his own, I think). At
one stage, he points off screen and shouts "Look, Romana! There's the
Mind-Brain Interface! This must be what the author is referring to
here.)

"The distinction  between  preliminary  portions of the brain
and the mind itself is  based upon  a functional demarcation line
beyond which  information  is free  to flow not  just  along  its  
original  dimension  but  orthogonally  sideways  out  into other 
dimensions of the mind."

(He's on a roll now. The sentences are getting longer and longer.) 

" The brain-mind  records  the  informational content  of each
sensory channel by routing the information through what is both a
transmission channel and an extremely long series of engram-nodes."

" You start out  with  your sensory nerves and pathways  going  
through  any  required  feature-extraction  and then feeding into
immensely  long  channels  of  tabula  rasa  memory."

"The flatness  of each memory-channel  matters  to the brain,
but  not  to the mind. "

(one of my favorites, that one)

"Each sensory memory channel is isolated unto itself,  except
for the associative tags  which lead away  at right  (orthogonal)
angles from the  time-dimension  of the memory  channel."

(oh, changed my mind. That last one is my favorite)


"You must have  a thorough comprehension  of the sensory  and
motor plane or "grid" of the mind before you study the two levels
of superstructure by which  mankind  achieves rational intellect."

"If a central nervous system did not have memory  as a record
of experience (and as an  enabling mechanism for learning),  then
its  sensory  nerves  would have  to lead  directly  to its motor
nerves."

(Ah, finally. Some biology. Turns out that this is exactly what
happens. Sensory nerves branch extensively before they get to the
brain, usually leading directly back to a motor center.)

"Notice something general about the information-loop in which
the  sensory and motor  pathways  do not meet  but instead launch
into a parallel race into the future."

"In other words, if you  comprehend  the associative sentient
grid which is the lowest of the three levels of mind, you are now
ready to proceed to the examination of the  second level of mind."


There's a lot more (and it's minutes of fun for the whole family), but
I'll have to stop and re-read the whole thing because I don't yet
comprehend the associateive sentient drid which is the lowest of the
three levels of the mind.


Happy modeling,

Matt




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