Comment by theptip

5 days ago

> But; they don't learn

If we took your brain and perfectly digitized it on read-only hardware, would you expect to still “think”?

Do amnesiacs who are incapable of laying down long-term memories not think?

I personally believe that memory formation and learning are one of the biggest cruces for general intelligence, but I can easily imagine thinking occurring without memory. (Yes, this is potentially ethically very worrying.)

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theptip

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lz400  5 days ago

>If we took your brain and perfectly digitized it on read-only hardware, would you expect to still “think”?

it wouldn't work probably, brains constantly alter themselves by forming new connections. Learning is inseparable from our intelligence.

  • WalterSear  4 days ago

    Our intelligence, yes. But that doesn't establish it as essential for thought.

    • lz400  4 days ago

      I mean, _we_ probably can't think with our wetware on a read-only substrate. It doesn't establish it as essential, just that the only sure example in nature of thought doesn't work that way.

      4 replies →

zeroonetwothree  5 days ago

> If we took your brain and perfectly digitized it on read-only hardware, would you expect to still “think”?

Perhaps this is already known, but I would think there is a high chance that our brains require "write access" to function. That is, the very process of neural activity inherently makes modifications to the underlying structure.

  • theptip  4 days ago

    > a high chance that our brains require "write access" to function

    There are multiple learning mechanisms that happen on different time-frames, eg neural plasticity, hippocampus are both longer-term processes for memory consolidation. Whereas the content of “RAM” might be better modeled as a set of fast dynamic weights representing ions and neurotransmitter concentrations.

    My hunch is that you could model the latter fast weights in volatile memory, but I wouldn’t count these as “modifying the structure”.

    Do you have any particular systems in mind where you have reason to believe that permanent modification is required for brains to function?