[JumpCrisscross]

> Your brain is doing computation with neurotransmitters instead of transistors

If it is, sure. But this isn't a given. We don't actually understand how the brain computes, as evidenced by our inability to simulate it.

> Evolution didn't discover some mystical process that imbues meat with special properties

Sure. But the complexity remains beyond our comprehension. Against the (nearly) binary action potential of a transmitter we have a multidimensional electrochemical system in the brain which isn't trivially reduced to code resembling anything we can currently execute on a transistor substrate.

> hese systems translate languages, write code, play Go at superhuman levels, and pass medical licensing exams... all tasks you'd have sworn required "real understanding" a decade ago

Straw man. Who said this? If anything, the symbolic linguists have been overpromising on this front since the 1980s.

[ben_w]

> Straw man. Who said this? If anything, the symbolic linguists have been overpromising on this front since the 1980s.

I'm sure I've seen people say this about language translation and playing go. Ditto chess, way back before Kasparov lost. I don't think I've seen anyone so specific as to say that about medical licensing exams, nor as vague as "write code", but on the latter point I do even now see people saying that software engineering is safe forever with various arguments given…

[JumpCrisscross]

Fair enough. I’m not going to argue nobody said anything. What I’ll contest is that anyone of consequence said it with consequence. These beliefs didn’t slow down the field. They didn’t stop it from raising capital or attracting engineers.

[ctoth]

Jonas & Kording showed that neuroscience methods couldn't reverse-engineer a simple 6502 processor [0]. If the tools can't crack a system we built and fully documented, our inability to simulate brains just means we're ignorant, not that substrate is magic. It also doesn't necessarily say great things for neuroscience!

And "who said this?"... come on. Searle, Dreyfus, thirty years of "syntax isn't semantics," all the hand-wringing about how machines can't really understand because they lack intentionality. Now systems pass those benchmarks and suddenly it's "well nobody serious ever thought that mattered." This is the third? fourth? tenth? round of goalpost-moving while pretending the previous positions never existed.

Pointing at "multidimensional electrochemical complexity" is just phlogiston with better vocabulary. Name something specific transformers can't do?

[0] https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo...

[JumpCrisscross]

> If the tools can't crack a system we built and fully documented, our inability to simulate brains just means we're ignorant, not that substrate is magic

Nobody said the substrate is magic. Just that it isn't understood. Plenty of CS folks have also been trying to simulate a brain. We haven't figured it out. The same logic that tells you the neuroscientific model is broken at some level should inform that the brains-as-computers model is similarly deficient.

> Pointing at "multidimensional electrochemical complexity" is just phlogiston with better vocabulary

Sorry, have you figured out how to simulate a brain?

Multidimensional because you have more than one signalling chemical. Electrochemical because you can't just watch what the electrons are doing.

> Name something specific transformers can't do?

That what can't do. A neuron? A neurotransmitter-receptor system? We literally can't simulate these systems beyond toy models. We don't even know what the essential parts are--can you safely lump together N neutransmitter molecules? What's N? We're still discovering new ion channels?!

[voidhorse]

I'm curious what you think understanding means.

I personally do not think operational proficiency and understanding are equivalent.

I can do many things in life pretty well without understanding them. The phenomenon of understanding seems distinct from the phenomenon of doing something/acting proficiently.

[ben_w]

> just phlogiston with better vocabulary

So, a decent approximation that only turned out to be wrong when we looked closely and found the mass flow was in the opposite direction, but otherwise the model basically worked?

That would be fantastic!

[sambapa]

So everyone in neuroscience is ignorant but not you?

[JumpCrisscross]

There is a lot of hocus pocus in neuroscience. Next to psychology, anthropology and macroeconomics.

That doesn’t make the field useless nor OP’s point correct.