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Comment by svnt | Hacker News Reader

> Also your comment about us not understanding how a neurone works does vast injustice to the amount of research that has been done in this field. At this point in time we do have a very good understanding of how a neurone works. What we don’t understand is how consciousness arises from it. And that’s the very thing you seem to be arguing that there’s no point researching.

This is the part you keep stating that is wrong. We know a lot about the most obvious electrical way that neurons act. That is nowhere near having a good understanding of how they work.

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Define “work”? Because the way they act is the way they work. What isn’t understood is how complex systems arise from these relatively simple parts. Which is the point I’ve made repeatedly.

@svnt I don’t know why your comment is flagged (wasn’t my doing) but thank you for the thorough response.

I’m going to hold off any more constructive response because I’m not familiar with those research papers specifically so have some homework to do :)

But I just wanted you to be aware that your comment was appreciated even if HN flagged it unfairly.

(I can’t reply in thread for the same reason. But hopefully you see this).

I responded with an informative post but apparently made the mistake of disclosing it was generated and it was flagged. I reviewed the post and it is correct. If you cannot see it, it says you are wrong/incomplete here and cites three studies I know of:

Beniaguev, Segev & London, "Single cortical neurons as deep artificial neural networks," Neuron, 10 August 2021, Volume 109, Issue 17, pp. 2727–2739.e3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2021.07.002 Open-access preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/613141v2

Gidon et al., "Dendritic action potentials and computation in human layer 2/3 cortical neurons," Science, 367(6473), 83–87 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax6239

Randi, Sharma, Dvali & Leifer, "Neural signal propagation atlas of Caenorhabditis elegans," Nature, 623(7986), 2023, pp. 406–414 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06683-4 Open-access preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.04790

Neurons are not individually simple, in any sense. Nor are they the only class of cell involved in cognitive processes — glial cells are involved in inhibition, memory, network modification, etc.

While I was not participating actively in the discussion - I just want to thank both participants for embodying the spirit of HN and academic discourse - especially in the face of a difficult debate that stirs strong emotions.

@svnt, @hnlmorg - this conversation - and the links it produced - are a fascinating read, and honestly gave me hope for discourse on the open internet.

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