Synthetic brain is on the cards,

using carbon nanotubes.

Nanotechnology moves on and on in leaps and bounds.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110421151921.htm

Fascinating development.

-m.

Originally posted by mikelom
using carbon nanotubes.
Nanotechnology moves on and on in leaps and bounds.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110421151921.htm

Fascinating development.

-m.

1
Question in the XXI centure:
Who needs "mental telepathy" when we have cell phones?
2
Question in the XXII century.
Who needs "men" when we have ‘robots‘ ?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110421151921.htm
====.

Originally posted by israelsocratus
1
Question in the XXI centure:
Who needs "mental telepathy" when we have cell phones?
2
Question in the XXII century.
Who needs "men" when we have ‘robots‘ ?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110421151921.htm
====.

Men will be designing robots for thousands of years to come.

Robots are neanderthal! 😛

-m.

Originally posted by mikelom
Robots are neanderthal! 😛

Pretty clever then! I understood a good laptop cannot yet match a cockroach. Neanderthal was next best only to Homo Sapiens. Mind you we could inter-breed with Neanderthal according to some genetic evidence - how will that work for robots? (Please don't answer that in the obvious, cockroach level manner!).

Originally posted by mikelom
Men will be designing robots for thousands of years to come.

Robots are neanderthal! 😛

-m.

One day robots will be cleverer than us.
Then men will not be making robots but robots will be making robots and robots will be telling us what to do and we will serve under them.

Originally posted by finnegan
Neanderthal was next best only to Homo Sapiens..

I believe his brain was bigger. We have no evidence for his intelligence, so I think it is unwarranted to claim he was second to Homo Sapiens.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I believe his brain was bigger. We have no evidence for his intelligence, so I think it is unwarranted to claim he was second to Homo Sapiens.

We're still not even sure whether Neanderthal man was Homo Neanderthalensis, a separate but closely related species, or Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, a sub-species of "normal" humans (with modern man being H.S. Sapiens). One thing we do know, though. Humans with modern characteristics survived; those with Neanderthal characteristics either died out or were assimilated into the current gene pool. So, yes, for practical purposes we can say that they did come second to us.

Richard

Originally posted by finnegan
Pretty clever then! I understood a good laptop cannot yet match a cockroach. Neanderthal was next best only to Homo Sapiens. Mind you we could inter-breed with Neanderthal according to some genetic evidence - how will that work for robots? (Please don't answer that in the obvious, cockroach level manner!).

they may not have become extinct because of lesser intelligence (but I am not sure if you implied this but I will continue as if you did) . For all we know, the only reason why Neanderthals died out was because of their physical characteristics of being shorter and stockier; great for ambush-hunting and surviving in freezing cold forests but not so good for surviving and hunting involving running at speed for long distances in warm drought-prone open grassland that gradually replaced all that freezing cold forests as the ice-age ended. Modern humans were slimmer, taller and built to run longer distances and faster than Neanderthals and this would have given them a huge competitive survival advantage even if they had no overall intelligence advantage.

Also, there is the possibility than they eventually became “extinct” simply through interbreeding with modern humans until Neanderthals-kind totally lost its genetic distinctiveness although there is no strong evidence for that that I am aware of.
Either way, it may not have been something to do with their intelligence that caused them to become extinct.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
One day robots will be cleverer than us.
Then men will not be making robots but robots will be making robots and robots will be telling us what to do and we will serve under them.

The human race's hunger for survival will never let that happen. We would destroy all technology before we let robots rule us.

Originally posted by tomtom232
The human race's hunger for survival will never let that happen. We would destroy all technology before we let robots rule us.

Actually I said that as a kind of half-joke-half-serious statement (with the “and we will serve under them” part being more of the joke-half part );

“...The human race's hunger for survival will never let that happen. ...”

arr, but what if they becoming cleverer than us and ruling over us is not only NOT in conflict with our survival but actually helps our survival because they are programmed to benefit and protect us?
Then I think, in that scenario, it would be conceivable that, providing we are reasonably rational (which we might not be) , that we may gladly let them take over control of our society and economy and even the whole world. The human politicians would, obviously, not like that! And would surely protest especially the power-hungry ones.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
Actually I said that as a kind of half-joke-half-serious statement (with the “and we will serve under them” part being more of the joke-half part );

“...The human race's hunger for survival will never let that happen. ...”

arr, but what if they becoming cleverer than us and ruling over us is not only NOT in conflict with our survival but actual ...[text shortened]... ld, obviously, not like that! And would surely protest especially the power-hungry ones.

There is no survival without challenge... but thats more philisophical. Basically, we wouldn't survive if we didn't have to do anything.

Originally posted by tomtom232
There is no survival without challenge... but thats more philisophical. Basically, we wouldn't survive if we didn't have to do anything.

I don't see how robots ruling over us would make as have nothing to do or have no challenges.
After all, currently human politicians ruling over us and yet we seem to still have things to do and have challenges.
How would merely swapping one of our rulers with another necessarily make a significant difference there?

Originally posted by mikelom
using carbon nanotubes.

Nanotechnology moves on and on in leaps and bounds.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110421151921.htm

Fascinating development.

-m.

This project is doomed to fail, if the ultimate goal is to reproduce the intentionality of human consciousness.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
This project is doomed to fail, if the ultimate goal is to reproduce the intentionality of human consciousness.

An interesting position. While such a result may be extremely difficult to achieve using anything other than brain matter produced in the normal manner, I don't believe there is any physical law that precludes the creation of a mind using other materials or methods. Do you know of such a law? Or are you just (understandably) pessimistic about the outcome?

Originally posted by PBE6
An interesting position. While such a result may be extremely difficult to achieve using anything other than brain matter produced in the normal manner, I don't believe there is any physical law that precludes the creation of a mind using other materials or methods. Do you know of such a law? Or are you just (understandably) pessimistic about the outcome?

It is one thing to create a brain, quite another to create a mind. The presumption is that the mind is reducible to causal relationships between neurons, and so proliferating neurons should do the trick. But the efficacy of conscious mental effort rewiring the brain (evident in the treatment of OCD pioneered by Jeffrey Schwartz), for instance, suggests that consciousness itself exerts its own influence, quite apart from the standard causal relationship between neural structures. Various regions of the brain, obviously, are dedicated to certain tasks, but reproducing their function, in itself, does not guarantee consciousness—much less causally efficacious consciousness. Apart from the obvious difficulty involved in the recreation of large-scale neuroplasticity, I don't think there is any law which precludes minds existing in brains dissimilar to our own, only that, if such minds exist, they cannot be reduced to their physical components (no more than, say, a painting can be reduced to its material components)—so even if the intentionality of consciousness is eventually reproduced synthetically, this would not vindicate a materialistic theory of mind.