The Brain isn’t Special

Theseus’s paradox raises the question of whether an object that has had it’s component parts replaced is still the same object. I have been dwelling on this a fair bit recently and relating it to whether a human who has all their “parts” replaced is still the same person.

It arose because I was trying to marry the Space Odyssey concept of our body’s simply being containers to what it really means to be a person, and how the next step in human evolution, being biological and mechanical, will play out.

If you think about what surgery can achieve today and how almost every organ can be transplanted you can obviously believe that the parts of us that can be “replaced” aren’t fundamental to our being. Every organ can be transplanted I believe, except the brain.

The reason brain transplants aren’t possible is because there are hundreds of thousands of individual connections (Neural pathways) to the rest of the body, and they all have to be aligned. Its not like you can just stitch two different spinal cords together and they will match up (Other wise something like The Man with Two Brains could exist).

But ignoring the physical restrictions, if one were to magically transplant their brain into your body, what would happen? Obviously the transplanted brain would make you completely different person.

This means the brain is fundamental to who we are as a person (Or contains what is). It is why many cyborg images still have brains even though the rest of them is robotic. But if you have ever seen a human brain you notice that it is exactly like every other part of the human body, it is just flesh. Why is it so special?

When a person dies their physical brain is still there but the person isn’t. Where is the fundamental part of being human that exists within our brain, but can disappear upon death and leave the brain behind?

To Be Continued.

2012
12/05
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philosophy
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Understanding vs Labeling

Whenever I try to do something I aim to understand it. Unfortunately most of the things in this world are way too complex to completely understand (And, to completely understand you have to reduce everything to how atoms and quarks interact). So how does one decide the point where their understanding is good enough?

I guess I try to aim for an understanding that would allow me to theoretically reproduce it with simple everyday things. When pulling apart my car engine I eventually created a mental model of how gears and cogs interacted to become an engine. Gears and cogs (plus other things) are really simple, they are just solid pieces pieces of metal, but they are ingeniously used together to create something as complex and useful as an engine.

However a for me to have a further understanding I would need to investigate further into the chemical and physical properties of combustion. I am aware that petrol is pumped into the engine and mixed with a spark to make a controlled explosive force. But why petrol and not water?

Because petrol is explosive…

In this case I have replaced my lack of understanding with the label “explosive”. I have no idea what makes something explosive, but I do know that with consistent inputs (Explosive + Spark) I can get consistent outputs (Explosion). Here no understanding of internals are required.

Even the most experienced experts reach a point where they have to use a label, it is nothing to be ashamed of. The world is too complex to completely understand everything. But many beginners will accept a label as an understanding for a concept that they really should know. Then when they delve further into the subject they get stuck, their label can’t explain to them how to manipulate the concept and therefore they can’t apply it to more advanced subjects.

Yudkowsky pointed out that often when trying to learn something it is more useful to replace a useless label with “magic”. When saying something is magic you are admitting your lack of understanding. And the first step to becoming better is to admit that you have a problem.

In my case I should replace “Petrol is explosive” with “Petrol is magic”. You use petrol in a combustion engine because petrol is magic.

2012
12/04
CATEGORY
learning
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Hollow Satisfaction

For the last couple days I have been messing around with the idea of making websites. It is an area that I have had much curiosity for because I never really understood how the whole internet concept worked.

That has changed as of today. I now feel capable of doing most things in regards to website creation (Not like an expert but I  have confidence that I would know where to look to solve any problem).

Here is what I did:

  • First I took my Raspberry Pi and loaded a web-server onto it.
  • I registered a free domain name.
  • I configured the router to forward requests to the server.
  • Finally I installed word-press (After relearning basic MySQL), and added a custom theme with plugins for a checkout so you could buy my theoretical T-Shirts.

It took ages, but I managed. And then I thought long and hard about what I had achieved. I realised that the end result was nothing. Sure a crappy website existed and I completely made it from scratch. But it meant nothing.

Learning it was awesome, but having finished was insignificant. Re-enforcing the whole journey being more important than the finish idea.

2012
12/03
CATEGORY
IT
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Best Day Ever

I’m proud to say that the 5am starts have completely corrected my body-clock. Yesterday was the first day all week that I didn’t have to get up at that ridiculous time to work. Instead I slept in until 7am! and I woke up feeling completely rested and amazing.

Then work for 10 hours (overtime was too tempting), doing manual labour and stuff.

Then I get home and decide to go for a run and half way through it starts to rain.

Yep, best day ever.

2012
12/02
CATEGORY
Fitness
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Human’s future evolution according to science fiction

Future Evolutionary Progression:

  • Biological (Current)
  • Part Biological, part Robot – Cyborg
  • Permanently part of virtual reality – live “Plugged” into the internet (With an interface to external reality?)
  • Pure Energy

I just finished reading 2001: A Space Odyssey, another book that astounded me and gave another perspective for viewing life.

In this book Stanley Kubrick details how his alien race advanced, and I have given the gist in the list above. Also many physicists (Michio Kaku) and technologists agree that this is what is likely to happen to all intelligent life as it advances.

Most people can imagine cyborgs or a future where we have mechanical replacements for body parts. It isn’t too much harder to imagine our brain controlling things other than humanoid equipment, in Space Odyssey it is suggested that the alien’s bodies were actually the spaceships they used to traverse the universe (Seen as the “graveyard” of ships after the aliens had advanced beyond physical bodies).

It’s harder to imagine a point where we replace our brains though, we would keep our memories and personality (and soul?) and simply upload these to a virtual reality where we live permanently as an virtual avatar or something. Possibly controlling drones to interact with the external environment, but in this case virtual reality would be as real as the external reality.

Finally it is suggested that the protagonist is transformed into a “starchild” where his pure life energy is freed from its physical container (Space Oddysey reckons the energy would emit light) and he gains full control over everything (Space, Matter, Time, etc).

The book suggests that these starchilds have control over time (He travels back to watch the big bang) but I would assume that he not only can go back and forward through time, but also sideways (If the world splits at a flip of a coin, one world for heads, one world for tails, being able to travel sideways in time would mean being able to choose what world you are in and therefore whether it lands on heads or tails).

Pretty much he can go to any time and understand what subtle changes will cause what, giving him the ability to control the outcome of anything (Like a baseball game).

Kubrick plus anyone who believes in transhuman evolution (Yours truly) think that this is the final step for intellectual beings. Where everyone is an omnipotent god.

2012
11/29
CATEGORY
philosophy
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You don’t have insomnia, you have a messed up sleep schedule

This is one of the best pieces of advice the internet has given me. So many of my friends and family are stuck in a cycle of staying up later and later and reminding everyone around them how it isn’t their fault.

The trick I have found is getting up earlier, my work occasionally requires me to start at 5am, meaning a 4am alarm for me. This sounds painful and it is, but after a few days in a row of doing this your body adapts. And you end up waking at sunrise and getting tired when it is dark. It’s almost ideal really.

2012
11/28
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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Weekends are the most boring

I have recently joined the majority of the population as someone who works through the week and has 2 days off on the weekend. I have always suspected but now have confirmed, that Saturday and Sunday are the most boring days of the week to have off.

Firstly because most places don’t stay open very long or at all. Probably because most people don’t work on the weekend.

Secondly because there are so many other people around, everything gets crowded.

What results is that the days we do get off have very little to do and have too many people trying to do the few things that are available.

The only positive is that friends also have these days off, having days off without anyone to spend them with makes the day significantly less fun.

 

2012
11/25
CATEGORY
The World
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Important because they are important

The De Beers company had a stranglehold on the diamond industry in the early to mid 1900’s. They had a monopoly on all diamond mines but their product had no demand, diamonds by themselves have no value (You can’t eat a diamond).

So they set out on a huge marketing campaign to make diamonds a symbol of love and commitment. And it was largely successful.

Today society demands that an engagement requires the exchange of a diamond engagement ring. The bigger the diamond, the more he loves her. Why is this? Because society says so. Why does society say so? Because De Beers once had a huge stockpile of diamonds that they needed to sell.

It is an example of something that is important because it is important.

Hallmark holidays, scoring a century in cricket*, getting a good job etc are all example of things that are socially created. When something is socially created you can become a theoretical “outcast” by not taking part (Being shunned by your social group, the fear of what your neighbours will say), but there are rarely benefits for partaking (unless you count social validation).

Caution has to be taken with socially created stuff because they are often stressful and expensive. You can easily run yourself into the ground by being involved in too many things that are unimportant the second they are over. However completely avoiding these things does lead to one to isolation, which is never a good thing. The trick is in understanding what you actually gain so you can find a balance between the two extremes.

 

*****

In the game of cricket, once a player scores 100 runs he has achieved a landmark score and takes a bow to the crowd. However the difference between someone who scores 100 and someone who scores 99 is negligible.

2012
11/23
CATEGORY
The World
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Growing up with safety

Many people grow up dealing with traumatic events, having family members get really sick and/or pass away, witnessing abuse or tragic accidents, all these things shape a persons view of the world in a negative way.

I feel especially fortunate that I never had any of these things happen to me. I understand that it actually is incredibly rare that someone is able to grow up and see so little of the bad shit that exists in this world.

These days I can truthfully say to myself that the world is a safe and good place to live in, and that everyone in it is equally good. This is mostly because I never learned to fear anything that exists in this world.

 

2012
11/22
CATEGORY
The World
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The existence of crappy things

There is a gigantic difference between an item that is of low quality and an item that is of the highest quality. As someone who programs on the odd occasion I can understand how stuff you create can sometime turn out badly even with the best intentions. But usually this is something that occurs as you learn how to actually create something that matches your idea of “quality”.

The thing is that this is something only rookies encounter, the whole idea of being an expert or a professional is that you are meant to have ironed out these problems.

So how is it that professionals and experts, keep creating stuff (I am specifically referencing electronic devices and software) that is below par. Surely these people take pride in what they do? And that upon seeing what they have created is garbage, realise that it needs more work?

There are a few possible explanations that I have come up with:

  • Effort vs profit. A high quality product costs heaps
  • Managerial pressure. Forced cost cutting
  • Systematic failure. Being forced to use incorrect people and tools
  • Lack of design understanding. Who really knows what people want?
  • Complexity problems. The bigger something gets, the harder it is to remedy problems

Blaming the problem on “idiots” is the easy way out. I prefer to believe the head designer knew what he was doing and was skilled but was stuck in a bad situation.

I still don’t know if these adequately explain it, most likely they all are contributing factors.

2012
11/21
CATEGORY
Business
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