Brain-like electrical signature emerging in a metallic nanowire network | Hacker News Reader

Brain-like electrical signature emerging in a metallic nanowire network

nims.go.jp

98 pointsmissosoup17 comments

Wow this article is total crap, and the brain comparison is basically absent from the paper, for good reason. Here’s what they actually did: - grow “metallic dendrites” from the bottom up, eg make a chip with random connections with memrister-like “synapses” - then characterize various I-V curves and other electrical properties of the device

That’s it. In terms of computation they can maybe be used for reservoir computing but then again so can many nonlinear dynamical system. But even concrete computations are not demonstrated.

Darn, I was hoping some progress had been made on providing feedback/reinforcement since this similar result in 2017:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-brain-built-from-atomic-swi...

I do wonder if consciousness will turn out to be a strange emergent property of existence. If we can make new consciouses comparable to our own should we? Will we treat them worse than immigrants and poor people? Will they be our slaves? I need to read more sci-fi...

Ted Chiang’s new collection of short stories, Exhalation, has a story called The Lifecycle of Software Objects with a compelling take on this. I really enjoyed it.

What would your conclusion be if it doesn't emerge?

I haven't concluded anything.

We sort of do already through children.

I would agree until we work out an ethical approach for that consciousness's existence and fulfillment we should be hesitant to purposefully create them.

I once assisted to an interesting discussion about the extensions of rights (morally and legally) and recognition of "status" to things previously considered "lower". E.g. different races or castes, pets, other animals, even plants[0].

It would appear the sphere of what we consider "worthy of respect/like us" is expanding. At the same time, as a society we often only pay lip service to the concept and end up justifying stuff like concentration camps for immigrants or mass animal cruelty. Humankind is varied.

[0] one classic argument being "Should Trees Have Standing" https://global.oup.com/academic/product/should-trees-have-st...

Did you perhaps mean "consciousness"?

Look I can't really spell and quickly copied what I thought was a correct spelling from Google. My brain has recently stopped working properly. I really do wonder what is wrong with me to have this constant fog over my mind, but thanks for being a pedant about it.

Why the hostility? I couldn't possibly have known about your condition, so kindly stop taking it as a personal attack. I certainly did not mean it as one.

Read synaptic self by Jason LaDuex[0], the leading theory for the last 20+ Years in the neuroscience field is that our consciousness is a sort of a reverb of electric signals between synapses. Rather than engaging in decisional thought, we are merely reacting to our environment and we think our decisions are ours but instead it’s the reverb during the delay of the electrical impulse to our muscles. So when you think “ I want to get off the couch”, your brain has already made the decision and your thought is occurring while the electrical signals are traveling to the necessary muscles to move.

Ends the idea of free-will, but considering we are all just chemical reactions at the biological level, makes sense..

[0] - Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are https://www.amazon.com/dp/0142001783

Direct link to PDF https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51330-6.pdf

Ghost in the Shell had a very vivid image of a similar nature in manga -- think it was also connected with nanowire networks. Predicted the future?

This is the way the world ends—not with a bang, but with a brain-Like electrical signature emerging in a metallic nanowire network.

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