This makes no sense to me. The information stored in the brain is a compressed version of the full set of experiences we have had, and that compression is lossy. Just like when I record music as an mp3, But that doesn't mean that when I play the mp3, the compressed music degrades further. So why should memories in the brain need to further degrade when accessed? Also, unless the result is a quantitative one, not a qualitative one, then the conclusion has no support unless it is shown that memories do not degrade the slightest bit when accessed. Maybe a memory that has the equivalent of a gigabyte of information degrades by a bit every time it is accessed, so if there's something you think about every 10 seconds, the memory does degrade by 10% over 30 years. If the result is "if human memory is computable, then at least the following amount of degradation must occur on each access", what is the key amount? The quantum states of the quarks and leptons in the brain can be computationally modeled in the same way as quarks and leptons anywhere else. The claim that this modeling won't work for the quarks in the brain is an extraordinary one that requires extraordinary proof. The assertions that living things are different, or human beings are different, or human brains are different, has been made over and over again throughout history, and has led to nothing. The assumption that living things and humans and human brains are composed of matter that obeys the same laws of physics as everything else has been an incredibly powerful one, that has led to huge progress in many fields. Frankly, I put "mathematics proves that the brain can't be modeled like the rest of the universe" in the same category as "I can trisect an angle with straightedge and compass"; not even worth reading through to find the fallacy. Andy On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 3:02 AM, Ray Tayek <rtayek@ca.rr.com> wrote:
http://science-beta.slashdot.org/story/14/05/08/1957225/mathematical-model-s...
<http://beta.slashdot.org/%7Etimothy>timothy posted 9 hours ago | from the opposite-would-be-more-suprising dept.
<http://beta.slashdot.org/%7EKentuckyFC>KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "One of the most profound advances in science in recent years is the way researchers from a variety of fields are beginning to formulate the problem of consciousness in mathematical terms, in particular using information theory. That's largely thanks to a relatively <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Information_Theory>new theory that consciousness is a phenomenon which integrates information in the brain in a way that cannot be broken down. Now a group of researchers has taken this idea further using algorithmic theory to study whether this kind of integrated information is computable. They say that the process of integrating information is equivalent to compressing it. That allows memories to be retrieved but it also loses information in the process. But they point out that this cannot be how real memory works; otherwise, retrieving memories repeatedly would cause them to gradually decay. By assuming that the process of memory is non-lossy, they use algorithmic theory to show that the <https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/898b104158d>process of integrating information must noncomputable. In other words, your PC can never be conscious in the way you are. That's likely to be a controversial finding but the bigger picture is that the problem of consciousness is finally opening up to mathematical scrutiny for the first time."
--- co-chair http://ocjug.org/
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