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> Said another way 'bioelectricity' is not simple.

> If you have the appropriate synapses but were somehow able to remove all the relevant RNA in an instant, the animal would continue to 'remember' its training. Synapses are sufficient.

I'm not sure these two statements are compatible. The first is definitely true, and rna does function on a slower timescale. We can't be 100% confident that some of the complexity we don't understand in the first statement wouldn't have an impact in the second scenario, can we?

I am not sure I would call RNA transferring regulatory programs "memory". This looks more like epigenetic transfer than what we would call memory (IE, factual recall). My training was before the more recent work with Aplysia, but "RNA memory transfer in planaria" was presented as an example of "how to make big claims with irreproducible experiments" in grad school.

I appreciate that epigenetics is a well-established field at this point but I worry people conflate its effects with other phenomena.

I tend to agree that the word "memory" makes me think of a higher level (more abstract) type of action than a simple reactive switch, I'm not sure where the line is or if there really needs to be one or not.

Having said that, are you familiar with the purkinje cell from a rabbit that they trained to respond to timed patterns of input in isolation?

Timed pattern=input 1, delay X, input 2, delay Y, then input 3.

Definitely more than a simple on/off switch type training, but does that rise to the level of "memory"?

> This is in contrast to a trained animal that has already undergone synaptic remodeling. If you have the appropriate synapses but were somehow able to remove all the relevant RNA in an instant, the animal would continue to 'remember' its training. Synapses are sufficient.

Not if you removed the DNA. Epigenetic changes to the DNA are what maintain the synapse at it's "learned" state. Here's a link:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402...

In addition, research has shown neurons communicating via mRNA (surrounded by a lipid).

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00492-w

https://www.inverse.com/article/40113-arc-protein-ancient-mo...

Lots of interesting stuff in this arena.

Additional note: I forgot that synapses are also maintained by local RNA (local=at/near the synapse), so removing the RNA would definitely cause the synapse to revert back to a different state and not retained it's "learned" state.

I also want to know how much of this was replicated by independent, skeptical sources looking for alternative explanations. One thing I see in “science” reporting is that one or a few people make wild claims, it hits the news, and people believe their word on faith with no replication. There’s also many statements about what we know where the claims made should have citations, too. Yet, people who have never run experiments like that are nodding along saying, “Of course it’s true.”

Or was all this replicated? What strengths and weaknesses did they hypothesize in these studies? What did they prove or disprove? What’s the next steps? And can we already implement any of those in simulators?

(Note: I think agents poking and prodding the world can definitely be implemented in simulators. Even primitive, game engines should be able to model some of that.)

Where one can learn about that in more details?

> In reality there are multiple systems that work together over multiple timescales to produce the behaviors we observe. Some of those systems can have their contributions mimicked by other interventions. Because of this complexity you can never say 'it's really about X', the best you can say is 'X plays a major role' or 'X contributes Y percent to this observed phenomenon'.

You can say the same thing about computer systems - as long as you don't understand the underlying logic. If you don't understand that the chemistry of transistors doesn't matter as much as the C code, you can say exactly the same critique about how a thinkpad works: "So while applying an external electrical voltage can act in a similar manner as causing a neuron to fire, it is far less precise than the calcium and sodium channel mediated depolarization which implements normal firing. Said another way 'bioelectricity' is not simple....In reality there are multiple systems that work together over multiple timescales to produce the behaviors we observe. Some of those systems can have their contributions mimicked by other interventions."

Once you do understand the logic - the 'why' of von neumann machines and Javascript and transistors, it's clear that your claim isn't true and there is an underlying logic. The trouble is, until we positively identify that logic, we can't know if it exists or not and we're stuck debating the bioequivalent of the fundamental computational significance of the clock cycle speed of a CPU.

I have a very rudimentary understanding of how electricity and electronic circuitry and transistor work, but it does make me wonder:

We use programming languages like C to create complex branching algorithms that are turned a linear machine code tape. Programmers generally can not understand assembly even if they understand the branching code that is turned into assembly. Even if assembly had variables, just the fact that if/else's and function calls are turned into jumps is enough to make the code too complicated to understand. It might be possible to disassemble back to C by resolving the jumps into something that is easier to understand.

Imagine if brains worked the same way. That there is actually a naturally-forming high level "brain language" that is turned by a "brain compiler" function into a low-level "brain assembly," but when we look at it all we see is the assembly. That what the brain is actually doing is relatively simple, but because we can only observe the output of the compiler function it appears to be insanely complex to reverse-engineer.

Then again, I don't have the faintest idea of how brains work either.

> Imagine if brains worked the same way. That there is actually a naturally-forming high level "brain language" that is turned by a "brain compiler" function into a low-level "brain assembly," but when we look at it all we see is the assembly.

And then make it analog and full of self-referential hacks.

Though honesty, if nature wanted to screw with us, it would make brain properly encrypted, perhaps even running on homomorphic encryption. Good luck deciphering that.

If our brains evolved to be protected against man-in-the-middle attacks, that would be extremely scary because it would imply the proto-humans that didn't have this ability went extinct to some brain-invading predator!

If we go far enough back, we may have done common ancestor/s that did develop compensatory mechanism/s to at least somewhat mitigate specific kinds of attacks, like what tarantula hawks can do to tarantulas.

Imagine this to be the very reason the human mind is mostly self-illegible — that the birth of the inscrutable unconscious was a defense mechanism?

Unconscious behaviors are often conserved across species and (lower level brain behaviors) in functionally and evolutionarily similar parts of the brain.

I guess technically true, but the cell channels are vastly more complex and much harder to measure. Chemical gradients can pass electric currents, but they can also trigger other chemical cascades and cause physical changes in the cell that may not be reflected when a charge is applied. Logic is also fairly consistent across computer systems, where biological systems can function differently from person to person, and even within the same person at different points in time. There are so many more variables with the living system.

Honestly, it sounds like what you’re saying boils down to claiming it’s just too complicated for there to be an underlying logic.

Ehhh, I am definitely saying its too complex for us to properly figure it out today. I wouldn’t categorically rule it out, but I do think the logic and rules in biological systems are much squishier than physics or chemistry.

> there is an underlying logic. The trouble is, until we positively identify that logic, we can't know if it exists or not

First you exclaim there is an underlying logic, then in the next sentence you say we don’t know whether it exists, which completely contradicts your claim.