I think it's been pretty well demonstrated by neuroscientists that the brain is not a binary computer. That doesn't mean that those scientists erred on behalf of supernatural religion or anything like that.
It is possible.
AFAIK, that is true.
Whether it's possible to replicate what happens in the brain on a binary system or not is a separate thing entirely. It's also not what LLMs are attempting to do.
Except the brain can be modeled with arbitrary precision - so he's got an uphill battle in either case.
TLDR: Yes, he literally said "binary computer" but from the context it's clear he means more than that.
Just because I can't count every grain of sand on Earth, doesn't mean sand grains are uncountable. Those are two distinct facts.
The practicality of a binary brain is distinct from the possibility of it.
Genuinely I don't understand this.
If the brain isn't just a physical system, then we may as well give up. There's certainly no point discussing it, as any assertions will be untestable and one persons elaborate and well thought out theory will be just as valid and predictive as the next persons "consciousness is created by invisible purple unicorns" theory.
So if we are going to discuss it, we should start from the assumption that there is no magic or witchcraft or religion involved.
Forgive my obtuseness, but if it turns out that the brain is more than just a physical system, what are we giving up? On science as a whole?
Isn’t science predicated on reliably predicting reality? Do we know how to describe reality accurately?
I asked below as well, but how does the observer effect work as a physical system? I get we don’t know so you can’t really answer, but if we can’t accurately describe reality then our science is woefully incomplete! Given that incompleteness I really don’t understand how we can rule out “invisible purple unicorns”?
I appreciate your explanation so far, thank you !
> I asked below as well, but how does the observer effect work as a physical system?
Just to be sure - the observer effect doesn't refer to a human observer, but rather to any measurement of a quantum system.
It is unsatisfying that quantum mechanics posits that particle states are fundamentally probabilistic. It's possible that in some sense there is an underlying order such as string theory that is impossible to test or verify. In that case, it would make sense to consider string theory as metaphysics. A fun exercise, but not scientific and not useful for understanding the world. By definition it would not be helpful in predicting or modeling the world, otherwise that would serve as a way of testing the theory.
More on the subject:
You can alleviate this mostly by accepting the MWI.
Under the MWI, all the possibilities do occur, and the probability manifests because when you split into an infinitude of yous, each of them is just one you, and has no way of predicting which you it will be on the other side.
So the MWI makes the wave equation deterministic when viewed from the outside. The trouble is that we are inside it.
It turns out that God does throw dice - it's just that all the combinations come up at the same time.
Because we've never in the history of science discovered a non-physical (supernatural) system. So it would be quite a surprise.
How does the observer effect work?
This is very basic scientific reasoning, friend.
If you want to argue outside of science you should state it up front - especially on a site like this.
People can drill really really hard on the fact that the brain doesn't function with purely 2 states, but it gets you nowhere. It's the same illusion as "pure analog music sources are "better" than digital sources". They're not, and it's a totally immaterial topic when discussing how the music sounds (audiophiles, come at me). Either system can produce the same sound, indiscernibly, even to the fanciest test equipment.
The brain also cannot escape that it's digital clone mirrors it's inputs and outputs to an arbitrary point of perfection.