The subjects are ingesting more calories than their bodies need. That's why they become obese. It's that simple.
Yes, everybody knows that. The question is what are all the things that lead people to ingest more calories than they need, and if certain kinds of pollution may play a part in that.
That's why they build machines like this. Trying out the parts that you think you understand is a good way to discover what's still missing. And I'm sure that the scientists who build the actual neural models understand the challenges better than you do.
this toy they built at best could only 'emulate' perhaps an insects' brain.
The article doesn't say how big it is right now, but the are planning to extend it to 1 billion neurons. That's bigger than a cat's brain.
Consciousness is likely similar in that is the emergent behavior once a critical number of rooms with the right contents are connected.
Consciousness is not like a light that can be on or off. It's more like a bag of different tools and tricks. You can have a few of them, and you'd have a limited form of consciousness, or you can have a large bag of human-like tools, and have a human level consciousness. For AI applications, it is most often not desirable to give the machine a large bag with tools it doesn't need. There's no need for a self driving car to be curious or get bored, for example.
No, it really isn't. Changing timetables or working hours or meetings times is done all the time.
Many stores in my town have business hours printed on a piece of paper behind their window. It's much easier to change the clock, than it is to reprint all the signs. Also, various kinds of public transport still have paper timetables. Even if everything is electronic, changing the times would require an atomic update on the entire database, rather than an update on the global time offset.
Once they settle on the exact timezones, the choice may not be so popular. Spain, for instance, is already outside it's natural time zone. If Germany decides to shift one hour to the east, then Spain has the choice of going along, which would skew their daylight hours even more, or decide to switch to another timezone, which would reduce overlap in office hours, potentially hurting their trade.
Switching between DST and not is hugely unpopular and it wouldn't really cause any harm to remove it.
Of course, you have to realize that people who object to moving the clock back and forth, have no experience what it is to actually go through an entire year on a fixed GMT offset. It could very well be that we decide to abandon DST, and then people realize this sucks even more.
So then, is photosynthesis “quantum” or not? “The observations show that there is correlation between the wavefunctions of the states involved in energy or electron transfer,” says Romero. “But these effects are not considered by some scientists as truly quantum coherence in the sense that entangled states of quantum computing are understood.” And Engel agrees that to compare the two is to invoke “the wrong language”.
It's almost as if they have style guides that tell them to use units that their audiences will understand! OMG that's so weird!
That's not a problem. They just should have used 125 - 150 mph. We're dealing with a rough estimate here, throwing in numbers like 124 suggests a precision that doesn't exist in the source.
try not to pat yourself on the back so much for handwaving away valid argument without any valid counter-argument whatsoever
The original claim was "Trying to use inorganic matter to simulate consciousness is a fools errand.". The person making that claim needs to provide a good argument for it, probably starting with a good definition 'consciousness', and what is exactly the difference between organic/inorganic matter.
Read about the Chinese Room experiment
Yeah, I am very familiar with it. It's completely bogus. Let me offer the Chess Room experiment as an example. You sit in a room with the full binary code of Stockfish, and a few billion pieces of scrap paper. A human grandmaster sits outside, writes his moves on a piece of paper and slips it in the room. You simulate an x86 processor running through the Stockfish code. After a few billion years of mindless simulation, you send a reply on a piece of paper. Do you now understand chess ? If not, you have just experienced the flaw in the Chinese Room argument.
First of all, we do not understand how or why consciesness exists, and that is a fundamental limitation.
Like I said, an argument from incredulity. If you admit you don't understand how it works, then you cannot claim anything about what's needed to implement it.
Trying to use inorganic matter to simulate consciousness is a fools errand.
Why ? Unless you can point out some fundamental limitations, it's nothing but an argument from incredulity. It's like saying we can only make a functional wing from feathers, and not aluminum.
Some work in the past couple of years has identified structures that might make each of those cells in our brains be the equivalent of many quibits in a quantum processor!
The brain is too warm and noisy to exploit quantum coherence on any meaningful scale.
Slashdot Mirror
So, what's wrong with this graph, which says imports are around 7 million barrels/day ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The subjects are ingesting more calories than their bodies need. That's why they become obese. It's that simple.
Yes, everybody knows that. The question is what are all the things that lead people to ingest more calories than they need, and if certain kinds of pollution may play a part in that.
We have no idea how our brains really work
That's why they build machines like this. Trying out the parts that you think you understand is a good way to discover what's still missing. And I'm sure that the scientists who build the actual neural models understand the challenges better than you do.
this toy they built at best could only 'emulate' perhaps an insects' brain.
The article doesn't say how big it is right now, but the are planning to extend it to 1 billion neurons. That's bigger than a cat's brain.
To truely emulate the brain, then memories have to be in each CPU.
What makes you think the CPUs don't have local memory to store the various parts of state of the neuron ?
Yes.
Consciousness is likely similar in that is the emergent behavior once a critical number of rooms with the right contents are connected.
Consciousness is not like a light that can be on or off. It's more like a bag of different tools and tricks. You can have a few of them, and you'd have a limited form of consciousness, or you can have a large bag of human-like tools, and have a human level consciousness. For AI applications, it is most often not desirable to give the machine a large bag with tools it doesn't need. There's no need for a self driving car to be curious or get bored, for example.
Don't try to force one view on everybody by messing with what time means.
Either we force one view on everybody, or we all pick our own.
If you don't like the first, nobody's stopping you from setting your personal clocks to your own preferred offset.
Solar noon has ZERO relationship to the number 12 on our clocks.
Zero relationship, except for the fact that for most people on earth, they are reasonably close together.
The problem is that those business hours are wrong for the current time zone. Don't cripple that by changing the time zone.
They don't look wrong to me. How do you define 'correct' business hours ?
No, it really isn't. Changing timetables or working hours or meetings times is done all the time.
Many stores in my town have business hours printed on a piece of paper behind their window. It's much easier to change the clock, than it is to reprint all the signs. Also, various kinds of public transport still have paper timetables. Even if everything is electronic, changing the times would require an atomic update on the entire database, rather than an update on the global time offset.
Once they settle on the exact timezones, the choice may not be so popular. Spain, for instance, is already outside it's natural time zone. If Germany decides to shift one hour to the east, then Spain has the choice of going along, which would skew their daylight hours even more, or decide to switch to another timezone, which would reduce overlap in office hours, potentially hurting their trade.
Switching between DST and not is hugely unpopular and it wouldn't really cause any harm to remove it.
Of course, you have to realize that people who object to moving the clock back and forth, have no experience what it is to actually go through an entire year on a fixed GMT offset. It could very well be that we decide to abandon DST, and then people realize this sucks even more.
With that kind of reasoning, why not move the clock ahead by 2 or 3 hours ?
We also knew it was possible to make rockets. The concept isn't new. He just thinks he can make a better version.
Plants are warm as well.
https://physicsworld.com/a/is-...
So then, is photosynthesis “quantum” or not? “The observations show that there is correlation between the wavefunctions of the states involved in energy or electron transfer,” says Romero. “But these effects are not considered by some scientists as truly quantum coherence in the sense that entangled states of quantum computing are understood.” And Engel agrees that to compare the two is to invoke “the wrong language”.
However, subway tunnels are often constructed with 12' or smaller diameter
Can you give an example ? A quick search showed that most are closer to 20'
It's almost as if they have style guides that tell them to use units that their audiences will understand! OMG that's so weird!
That's not a problem. They just should have used 125 - 150 mph. We're dealing with a rough estimate here, throwing in numbers like 124 suggests a precision that doesn't exist in the source.
try not to pat yourself on the back so much for handwaving away valid argument without any valid counter-argument whatsoever
The original claim was "Trying to use inorganic matter to simulate consciousness is a fools errand.". The person making that claim needs to provide a good argument for it, probably starting with a good definition 'consciousness', and what is exactly the difference between organic/inorganic matter.
Read about the Chinese Room experiment
Yeah, I am very familiar with it. It's completely bogus. Let me offer the Chess Room experiment as an example. You sit in a room with the full binary code of Stockfish, and a few billion pieces of scrap paper. A human grandmaster sits outside, writes his moves on a piece of paper and slips it in the room. You simulate an x86 processor running through the Stockfish code. After a few billion years of mindless simulation, you send a reply on a piece of paper. Do you now understand chess ? If not, you have just experienced the flaw in the Chinese Room argument.
First of all, we do not understand how or why consciesness exists, and that is a fundamental limitation.
Like I said, an argument from incredulity. If you admit you don't understand how it works, then you cannot claim anything about what's needed to implement it.
The two-mile-long Los Angeles tunnel takes 30 seconds to get through via a sped-up video.
Musk is reported to be working on a version where it only takes 15 seconds, by speeding up the video to ludicrous levels.
According to the article, this machine also simulates chemical signalling.
so far as we currently understand it
Obviously, yes. So far as we currently understand it, the brain also doesn't exploit the magical properties of fairy dust.
Trying to use inorganic matter to simulate consciousness is a fools errand.
Why ? Unless you can point out some fundamental limitations, it's nothing but an argument from incredulity. It's like saying we can only make a functional wing from feathers, and not aluminum.
Some work in the past couple of years has identified structures that might make each of those cells in our brains be the equivalent of many quibits in a quantum processor!
The brain is too warm and noisy to exploit quantum coherence on any meaningful scale.
particularly black coffee, which is also a cocktail of pharmacologically acrtive compounds
Adding a bit a milk or sweetener doesn't change any of that. It might dilute the effect a bit, but you could just take two cups.