[stelonix]

It really isn't about having a soul, but more like about either:

1) stating human brains are actually hypercomputers, which cannot be implemented in real life at the moment

2) stating just what you said before: pattern matching, no matter how many layers or parameters used, is not all there is to intelligence/consciousness

At the moment, whether you like it or not, there's no proof at all the human brain works in any way like a Turing machine. That idea which has nothing to back it up is the usual POV here on HN and it is the actual faith-based belief but again, no scientific papers to back it up.

[ok_dad]

Do you really think there's more to the human brain than a more-complex version of a computer? I think we've all established that the brain is a network of neurons with different structures that do different processing and that the neurons work in a specific way to turn sensory inputs and memories into thoughts and actions. We don't know everything about the metaphysical aspects of how the mechanics turn into "consciousness" but we pretty much know that we could, with a powerful machine, simulate most of the mechanics ourselves. Maybe an AI isn't as complex as our biological computer, but that's because our AIs run on computers that are only several dozen generations in, versus our brains which are several million generations in. Perhaps in several million generations of our AI hardware and software, we'll come up with something as computationally powerful as our brains.

[TchoBeer]

I don't think we know any of that. We know many of the mechanisms through which neurons act but not all of them, nor do we know that we can simulate a human brain on a computer.

[orlp]

> stating human brains are actually hypercomputers, which cannot be implemented in real life at the moment

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[adgjlsfhk1]

it's pretty easy to prove that a brain can simulate a Turing machine, and it's pretty hard to disbelieve that a computer can simulate a brain (by running the physics)

[astrange]

If a brain is a hypercomputer (like a quantum computer), then you could simulate it on a classical computer; you'd just never be able to do it in constant time, so it could never be fast enough to catch up with reality.

Also, you wouldn't be able to simulate a specific existing brain due to the quantum no-cloning theorem.

[orlp]

The claim I find objectionable is that brains do 'hypercomputation', and can not be ran on a Turing machine.

[stelonix]

Brains can solve the halting problem, Turing machines cannot.

[adgjlsfhk1]

no they can't.

[abetusk]

To your point 1, arguments of this sort are not that we can't make a computer, someday, that will encapsulate consciousness, it's an argument that we will never be able to. People will try to use fancy contortions to get around it, but the basic argument is that consciousness is fundamentally not "of this reality", so no, the article is squarely taking a stance that thinking machines are not a "maybe, someday" event, they're a "never" event.

To your point 2, this directly contradicts your point 1, and is, what I would call, a "dualist" philosophy. This is a basic statement that thinking, the way we do it, is fundamentally not mechanical and therefore not describable by our laws of physics. That is, however we think is literally not of this universe. The "dualism" comes in by naming the other "plane of existence" (or whatever you want to call it) as the companion universe or reality to ours where our intelligence effectively resides.

I think Turing is a little maligned here. His test was meant to strip away all the red herrings that one might use and focus on what (I'm imagining) he thought was the most fundamental of all human traits, the ability to reason and to use language. The Turing test is a functional one. If something talks like a human, reasons like a human, acts like a human, then how would you tell the difference between the "real" human and the "simulated" human? By creating a functional test, it gets at the core of the issue. If you can't come up with a test to differentiate one from the other, the question of what's "really" human becomes academic.

So, to, the focus on Turing machines. The specifics are a little byzantine, nowadays, but the point is that there's an "equivalence" of machines, where one can be used to simulate another. The point about being Turing machine equivalent is the mechanization part, not the specifics of tape reading and what the state machine looks like, so much.

In terms of proof, I would say this: If someone were to predict the progress of machine learning and artificial intelligence as it progresses towards becoming feature parity with the human brain, one might well predict all of the milestones that have been achieved. For example, beating the best human at checkers/chess/go, being able to do speech to text, being able to identify people by faces, being able to replicate someones voice/gait/face, being able draw novel art, being able to hold on a conversation, etc.

In my opinion, the human brain is not monolithic and is compromised of many sub systems interacting with each other. That being the case, I would expect some type of "general intelligence" to come by once all the sub systems have become modular and easy to use, with some kind of "operating system" bringing it together to be able to have one part communicate with another and be able to make broader scoped decisions based on input from each of the subsystems.

This is a long way of saying I believe there is quite a bit of evidence that we're getting closer to "thinking machines". They may not work exactly how our brains work but that's kind of beside the point, they're functionally doing what we would expect them to do on the path towards human brain feature parity.

[stelonix]

I said either, not both points.

Point 2 does not require what you call a "dualist view", it's simply stating that deep neural networks are not all there is to intelligence. Another layer of fact checking, maybe even imperative programming, could be an answer. It certainly has nothing to do with soul, but with the belief the human brain is a bunch of lookup tables.

[anononaut]

Do you have any recommended reading/viewing on the subject?

[abetusk]

I've been thinking about this a bit since I saw your reply. I'm not sure how to respond to this and I'm not sure references I would give would be satisfactory to you.

What kind of reading and references are you looking for? Can you give some examples of reading or other resources you've found enlightening on other subjects?