GENIUS FORUMS

You are the one who is self-important, Mr 90 words per minute who reads all the books. Do you know anything about consciousness, really?

Pincho Paxton wrote:The brain is limited to its size. Genius have better selective memory however, so can reuse some of it, but this can be dangerous. Stephen Hawkins probably has super-selective memory, but it probably over-wrote his body functions. That's how dangerous it can be.

Hawking suffers from a Neurodegenerative disease called ALS or Lou Gerig's disease and has nothing to do with his conscious intent to utilize his memory. A "friend" of mine has Multiple Sclerosis which is similar to ALS and this is certainly not something she brought about by fantastic use of her memory. She is of average intelligence, average ability to recall memories. She is pretty average all round besides having a neurodegenerative disease.

You see, this is the problem with armchair philosophizing about empirical questions. People tend to leave out important facts pertaining to the subject matter and speak only from an extremely narrow idealized frame of reference. I strongly advise all of you to pick up a book(s) on the subject of brains and read it.

I don't mean to sound arrogant, I mean this with all sincerity, what you are saying on the subject of brains is completely misguided and has no basis in observable reality - the domain of brains.

Carl G wrote:You are the one who is self-important, Mr 90 words per minute who reads all the books. Do you know anything about consciousness, really?

Typing at 90 WPM is an artifact of circumstances. I don't really take any pride in it, I've only mentioned it to elucidate the underlying causes of typos.

I'm not going to get into a full-fledged ego-battle with you over this. I merely stated where you were factually incorrect, provided a rather complete explanation of the failure and predicted adequately your vary next statement. All of this was for your benefit, not mine. If you get nothing out of it, that's unfortunate, but I have nothing more to say unless you want to continue to discuss computational neuroscience and its relationship to consciousness.

Animus,

Regarding brain plasticity.. I was wondering if you've ever come across any research about excercises people can perform that would enhance their plasticity. i.e. I read that following a stroke, patients are encouraged to engage in specific exercises that assist in the formation of new neural pathways. Do you know anything on this subject?

Thanks in advance. :)

Carmel wrote:Animus,

Regarding brain plasticity.. I was wondering if you've ever come across any research about excercises people can perform that would enhance their plasticity. i.e. I read that following a stroke, patients are encouraged to engage in specific exercises that assist in the formation of new neural pathways. Do you know anything on this subject?

Thanks in advance. :)

Go for a brisk walk. That's the best advice I know of. Physical exercise is very helpful because it increases the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain. Blood carries nutrients required for brain function and plasticity. Mental exercises are also very helpful. Challenging your own thought-patterns is probably the best possible thing you could do to prevent yourself from collapsing into a rigid structure. Developing new concepts is also an exercise in neuroplastic change. Whenever you have a realization or learn something it correlates with neural activity. So just reading an intriguing book can be an exercise in neural plasticity. But humans have a tendency to expose themselves repeatedly to the same concepts and material which only affirms their existing thought-patterns. This can serve to further solidify the neural networks, but it can also lead to mental rigidity. The brain will tend to associate stimuli with extant structure and avoid developing a unique representation. So you see, we have this tendency to constantly confirm our existing thought-structure, avoid disconfirming ideas or facts and try to fit the unavoidable contrast into the existing structure. In fact, brains also tend to confabulate quite a lot; meaning make shit up. So instead of recognizing a thing for what it is, a brain will often pretend its something different, if even only slightly different. Consequently, it is good practice to have an open mind and not always try to fit facts or new ideas into an existing framework, but allow the whole framework to evolve with the new facts and ideas. Typically, there are about 100,000,000 synaptic weight adjustments and other structural changes occurring in the brain every day. There is no way for you or I to measure this, but you can imagine that an epiphany probably involves many such adjustments. One hundred million changes in the brain gives new meaning to; You learn something new everyday.

Wow! This is a very interesting topic. The Brain is limited to the amount of data that is fed in. The other factors like the memory power & storage depends on the structure of different brains. In order to improve efficiency of our brain power, we can perform various exercises.
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Animus, Thanks for the prompt reply.

Interesting post. There's some really good advice in there...

I'm signing off now, but may comment further later.

Animus wrote:

Pincho Paxton wrote:The brain is limited to its size. Genius have better selective memory however, so can reuse some of it, but this can be dangerous. Stephen Hawkins probably has super-selective memory, but it probably over-wrote his body functions. That's how dangerous it can be.

Hawking suffers from a Neurodegenerative disease called ALS or Lou Gerig's disease and has nothing to do with his conscious intent to utilize his memory. A "friend" of mine has Multiple Sclerosis which is similar to ALS and this is certainly not something she brought about by fantastic use of her memory. She is of average intelligence, average ability to recall memories. She is pretty average all round besides having a neurodegenerative disease.

You see, this is the problem with armchair philosophizing about empirical questions. People tend to leave out important facts pertaining to the subject matter and speak only from an extremely narrow idealized frame of reference. I strongly advise all of you to pick up a book(s) on the subject of brains and read it.

I don't mean to sound arrogant, I mean this with all sincerity, what you are saying on the subject of brains is completely misguided and has no basis in observable reality - the domain of brains.

I never said it wasn't a disease. I never said that selective memory was a conscious intent, and I suppose that you could still be average as well.

Pincho Paxton wrote:I never said it wasn't a disease. I never said that selective memory was a conscious intent, and I suppose that you could still be average as well.

Pincho Paxton wrote:Stephen Hawkins probably has super-selective memory, but it probably over-wrote his body functions. That's how dangerous it can be.

I am pretty average in my physiological basis and actually my memory for events is pretty poor. I can't remember half of this week in terms of events. But that's also because I haven't done anything this week except read and discuss philosophy and science online. So my memory of the week is just a bunch of text and doesn't follow much in regards to temporal progression. Its more of a nebulous mass of content.

Enlightenment is the ability of possessing logic, it has nothing to do with education. It is just reasoning ability and the ability to teach. An uneducated brain can possess logical reasoning.

Genius is about ability and intelligence and the knowledge to promote their genius.

Thankyou everyone who contributed to this thread, it is free education that helps to expand my limited knowledge. I hope to see this thread continue, as everyone has great ideas, opinions/facts and I appreciate reading the dialogue that corresponds as intellectual speak.

Facts are facts, they've been proven, and I respect that, still I find myself questioning the idea if human brains are indeed limited to data input. The human brain continues to take-in data until death occurs, therefore infinity has come to it's end in the human brain.

Ryan Rudolph wrote: The brain is like a computer, it takes in electrical stimulus from the environment and creates a mental picture, but its capacity is dependent on the material structure of the brain.

It's not like a computer, it is a computer. Was designed using organic technology, way beyond what humans can or ever will do.

A computer in the broad sense is what the brain is. But in the sense of modern desktop computers its very different. What makes you think humans will never create an artificial brain? Click!

because humans are not built that way, they are built for love, affection, sexuality, altruism.

They have limited dexterity and mind capacity for a reason.

A human attempt at AI would be vulgar and laughable at best, in light of what god can do.

But God would have an even more complex brain, and he would be wondering how he got that from nowhere. It's just a paradox to even mention God. I prefer to think of the electrons, because we already know that an electron, and a few pieces of matter create a brain neuron. So an electron surrounded by matter can have part of a thought. If it is next to more electrons surrounded by matter they can have a greater thought. The Universe if full of electrons surrounded by matter, and such a brain can easily create man.

Prince,

A human attempt at AI would be vulgar and laughable at best, in light of what god can do.

But we are god. And we are here to manipulate nature's imperfect design and make it better. If nature was our teacher, do you not believe it is feasible that we may eventually outperform our teacher, us being the student, ?

Our AI would be crude and vulgar only if we are starting from scratch, but we have millions of years of evolution to study as a means to improve upon that blueprint. In essence, natural selection has done much of the work for us.

I think it is possible, and inevitable if we do not destroy ourselves first.

Animus,

Can you recommend anything by Hebb? you are the second person I've heard reference him in a neuroscience discussion. My neuroscience professor mentioned Hebb as well, and apparently he is from my home province of Nova Scotia, Canada.

Ryan Rudolph wrote:Can you recommend anything by Hebb? you are the second person I've heard reference him in a neuroscience discussion. My neuroscience professor mentioned Hebb as well, and apparently he is from my home province of Nova Scotia, Canada.

Sorry Ryan, I haven't actually read his work. I'm just familiar with the Law in neuroscience. Apparently it originates from his work "The Organization of Behavior"

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prince wrote:

Ryan Rudolph wrote: The brain is like a computer, it takes in electrical stimulus from the environment and creates a mental picture, but its capacity is dependent on the material structure of the brain.

It's not like a computer, it is a computer. Was designed using organic technology, way beyond what humans can or ever will do.

Are you aware that scientist have made a biological computer?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/358822.stm

Are you aware that it's a primitive pile of crapola and always will be?

prince wrote:Are you aware that it's a primitive pile of crapola and always will be?

You're cute.

I know. Cute as cute can be.

I used to think like Prince, meaning I thought that we will never be able to outperform a complex structure like the human brain that took millions of years to evolve, but then I started to research what we have done already, and we have only just began, and my new opinion is that anything is possible in this regard.

All scientists must do is form an engineering theory of the brain, and build on that, and many research groups are doing it already, and it might only take 50 years for a significant breakthrough.

Just as the inventors at MIT thought that the internet wouldn't amount to anything special, they thought it might be a useful alternative to the telephone, that is as far as their blind vision could see, and I think most of us think in this limited manner when trying to comprehend what technology can do.

Basically, I think technology has emerged as a novel driving force in evolution, it is a new factor that will change all the rules.

No longer is the species dependent on thousands of years of environmental pressure, we are now beginning to be the creators of our own destiny, our destiny to be super-beings, rather than the primitive fleshly animals we presently are.

Pincho Paxton wrote:But God would have an even more complex brain, and he would be wondering how he got that from nowhere. It's just a paradox to even mention God. I prefer to think of the electrons, because we already know that an electron, and a few pieces of matter create a brain neuron. So an electron surrounded by matter can have part of a thought. If it is next to more electrons surrounded by matter they can have a greater thought. The Universe if full of electrons surrounded by matter, and such a brain can easily create man.

This is interesting stuff, the kind of stuff I want to know about. It sounds like scientists are discovering what God is about. If scientists could create thought, how would they know what the thought thunk?

Ryan Rudolph wrote:I used to think like Prince, meaning I thought that we will never be able to outperform a complex structure like the human brain that took millions of years to evolve, but then I started to research what we have done already, and we have only just began, and my new opinion is that anything is possible in this regard.

Well, within a certain light, even the most primitive tools can seem more complex than what nature can construct. If you accept evolution, then our bodies evolved through natural processes... a process I dare say that could never produce something like a desktop fan, a notepad, or even a screw driver.

Of course our bodies are still incredibly complex biological forms, and the conscious is still not fully known, but don't shortchange the abilities of your brain.