Is the nervous system a democracy? (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Is the nervous system a democracy? (2016)

scientificamerican.com

39 pointskawera19 comments

I would like to suggest that the mind has a holographic property, which means the more neurons in a cluster the more resolution they exhibit, at the same time as different parts of the minds specialize, and are dominant in various behavior loops, and these do raffle for consensus.

The illusion that is the singular self can run separate perspectives concurrently (sic., driving while self assembling a story narrative in the mind)

The random layperson's mind is a hodgepodge of their development. A well trained mind can compartmentalize, become sensitive to the slightest internal cognitive dispositions, and self specialize in ways you will accuse of being science fiction.

First, I was surprised Minsky's Society of Mind isn't mentioned. Worth checking out, if you are unfamiliar.

> A single “dictator neuron” can take charge of complex behaviors

My term for this theory is "Brain Pilots": https://breckyunits.com/brain-pilots.html

He's kinda informally blacklisted, due to his bad behavior. He's already being supplanted by other thinkers, although his writings are worth a read.

You should have said "due to his alleged bad behavior".

The allegations have been made after his death, when he could not defend himself and even those allegations do not contain the slightest evidence of "bad behavior" of Minsky, but only of Epstein:

"Virginia Giuffre testified in a 2015 deposition in her defamation lawsuit against Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell that Maxwell "directed" her to have sex with Minsky among others. There has been no allegation that sex between them took place nor a lawsuit against Minsky's estate. Minsky's widow, Gloria Rudisch, says that he could not have had sex with any of the women at Epstein's residences, as they were always together during all of the visits to Epstein's residences."

I have no idea which is the truth about Minsky, but I find it disgusting that when R. M. Stallman has published a correctly argumented defense for his dead friend, there have been great attempts to cancel him, even if there were no grounds to criticize this action. Sadly, there is no difference between the American "cancel culture" and the hunt for the "enemies of the working people" that happened in the universities of the countries from Eastern Europe after those countries became controlled by the Russians after WWII. Also there, it was typical that some unproved allegations of even minor "bad behavior" would result in the accused losing their academic jobs and being permitted for the rest of their lives to do only some menial work, for their "reeducation". When any friend had attempted to defend them against the false accusations, they would have had the same fate, exactly like in the case of Stallman.

RMS's "correctly argumented defense" was that the underage women under Epstein's employ "presented themselves as entirely willing", so Minsky is in the clear because the accusations are moot. I would like to see your definition of "correct", and I hope you do not work in public relations.

You probably have not read the various texts written by Stallman about this subject, as the main arguments were different.

I have searched now for your quote, and it is extracted from a context where its meaning was different.

In that context, Stallman was replying to a newspaper article that had accused Minsky of "sexual assault" against an underage woman. Stallman was arguing that even if it were true that Minsky had intimate relationships with an underage woman, then the term "sexual assault" would still be inappropriate, because Epstein's employee must have presented herself, as instructed by her boss, "as entirely willing".

So this was not an argument about whether Minsky was guilty or not of something, but it was only an argument against a journalist using the hyperbolic term "sexual assault", without having any evidence backing it up.

As we now know, the newspaper article was even more baseless, because there has never been any evidence that Minsky had any relationship with an underage woman or that he knew that such a woman had received the suggestion to please him, among other eligible guests.

Stallman's position was right, because true sexual assault must be clearly distinguished of statutory rape, exactly like armed robbery must be clearly distinguished of fraud, even if all are crimes that must be punished. True sexual assault and armed robbery are felonies everywhere. On the other hand, whether something is statutory rape or fraud or it is not punishable, that depends on the jurisdiction, as the laws are very different from place to place.

And most people in eastern Europe seem to be 100% convinced that it does actually come from Russia, and any attempt to argue otherwise gets you labelled a "Russian"...

For me it's self evident the argument is false by way of contradiction. Assume it's true. There exists a consciousness nerve cell, with a nucleus and such as all nerve cells have, somewhere in the mind. As far as how the brain is "built" during the embryonic stage, you'd expect that cell to have a typical "home" in the brain or brainstem somewhere. Then that "home" would be a known spot where if a stroke occurs, or other damage, at once eliminates forever that persons consciousness. But not so common core area such as this has ever been found, suggesting our assumption in the first place, that such a cell exists, is false.

Now that's one extreme, the all commanding cell. It's also self-evident that cells aren't some 'set of equals' commune. Of course there are master cells that activate other cells in certain conditions. This is seen even in our deep learning nets where you may have a "I see a cat" neuron and "I see a dog" neuron that triggers the response program for those things.

That's all to say, reality is a place in between

Hmm, you bring up an interesting point. Contradiction and proof by it are very powerful (proof by induction or contradiction being the two from classical logic). IF we consider that fully centralized (100% centralized) or fully decentralized (evenly spread, even density) are the extremes then maybe we have an idea, and maybe the real terrain is somewhere in the middle, but now we're talking spring mechanics of decision making and rarefaction and compression of decisions. Maybe something closer to how expressivity behaves.

What are you actually arguing against here? The article is about a variety of different phenomenon, some of which can be interpreted as a neuronal "dictatorship" (e.g. escape actions) and some of which can't (e.g. monkey arm movement).

I don't think you can characterise something as complex as a mind with a simple argument by contradiction.

(by the way, you might be interested in Oliver Sack's popsci book "the man who mistook his wife for a hat". A lot of it is about temporal lobe injuries, which are well known to cause consciousness-related disorders)

Original (and updated) source: https://theconversation.com/is-your-nervous-system-a-democra...

> Is the nervous system a democracy?

I don't know much about neuroscience but right now democracy seems like a very nervous system.

> Scientists have long used the metaphor of government to explain how they think nervous systems are organized for decision-making.

I've never seen this happen and I can't imagine anyone in the present day using "government" to describe "organized decision making."

No? It's a meritocracy - evolution wouldn't spit out something that inefficient.

I suspect it's equivalent to a Universal Turing machine but I haven't seen any models or proofs on this. If that's the case then just like computers some nerve cells are switches that activate "programs" of thousands or more neurons, just like the article mentions.

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