I understand and agree with your reply, based on “current models” of how the human brain works. None of those models, however, can explain consciousness. In a new model I’ve developed, there is a very different way to think about your point.
In my model, the brain is NOT a spreading neural net (which is the LLM model as well). It is …
I understand and agree with your reply, based on “current models” of how the human brain works. None of those models, however, can explain consciousness. In a new model I’ve developed, there is a very different way to think about your point.
In my model, the brain is NOT a spreading neural net (which is the LLM model as well). It is a “massively parallel serial data store”. That is, after preliminary processing in the parietal lobe, each sensory input, at the individual sensor level, is recorded as a “real time” continuous data string. This is like the old “bubble memory” architecture. The entire history of a person’s experience, for every sensory nerve, is stored! All along this nerve path, there are cells that make a “real time” comparison between the data they are sensing and what is newly arriving.
This produces 2 important results. 1. It explains how we can recall any experience in our entire life in less than a second. 2. It explains how our memories appear to be “full experiences”. That is, when a new experience arrives, the activated “comparison” cells trigger all the other comparison cells that are sensing their recorded data at the same time point! This second result directly leads to our “memory” consciousness. It also explains dreams, and the reality of hallucinations and PTSD.
Related to your observation of “sequences of text… pixels … imgs …. Phonemes…” my model agrees that, a short sequence, by itself, provides zero understanding. BUT, a very different phenomenon occurs in the brain when each word or short sequence of images, simultaneously, finds a lifetime of matches in the brain that are also made available for comparison. It is this “memory response system” that defines the “doctor” or “plumber”. Significantly, it provides a very pertinent model to explain the multiple ways the current LLM architectures are headed in the wrong direction.
Bruce, your architecture sounds extremely *plausible*, brain-like [unlike NNs that are brain-like in name only!]. Curious how you represent experiences, including non-verbal ones (eg the experience of tripping on a rock, or feeling the wind - there's no data, or more generally, no symbols in these).
In my model, I view memories as “complex, streaming, associated, time-based, “perception experiences”. That is, what both humans and vertebrate animals “perceive” as an “experience” is the flow of all sensory signals through some pretty limited place in the brain, possibly at the “output” of the parietal lobe. Tripping on a rock, or feeling the wind, is simply the “experience” of the flow of signals from the entire body’s sensory system after the parietal lobe has processed them into a spatially coherent organization. As you say, there are no symbols at that point.
Now, continue the experience of “feeling the wind”. The parietal processed sensory nerve signals from the million sensors on the surface of the skin, that feel the fluttering coolness, are individually “streamed” into the volume of the brain that “memorizes” skin sensation. They are “output” into this volume as individual real-time data streams in exactly the same way tactile cells code their sensations. At the same time, on what computers would call a “parallel buss”, all those thousands of immediate sensations are broadcast individually to the chain of nerves memorizing the history for that individual nerve, for the entire sensory brain. When similar matches are detected, for the entire life memory of the individual animal, that prior experience is also sent back, in parallel fashion, to the parietal lobe, which just considers them an “associated” experience.
The result is, when we “feel” the wind, our primary “sensation” is just the signals from our skin cells. BUT, for every past experience, that the “comparator” nerves determine to be similar, those past experiences are blended into the current sensation. AND, what is actually stored as the current experience, is the BLENDED experience.
To address the “symbolic” issue, while the skin sensing process is occurring, other parts of the brain are simultaneously capturing input from all the other sensory systems: vision, balance and motion, temperature, sound, etc. The complex factor we call emotion is also being captured. A special part of the brain, that make us "human", is simultaneously capturing summaries of all of these.
A way to understand “symbology”, in this context, is to view “symbols” as just “unique” combinations of multiple sensations that we have been “trained” to memorize as important for particular experiences.
Saty,
I understand and agree with your reply, based on “current models” of how the human brain works. None of those models, however, can explain consciousness. In a new model I’ve developed, there is a very different way to think about your point.
In my model, the brain is NOT a spreading neural net (which is the LLM model as well). It is a “massively parallel serial data store”. That is, after preliminary processing in the parietal lobe, each sensory input, at the individual sensor level, is recorded as a “real time” continuous data string. This is like the old “bubble memory” architecture. The entire history of a person’s experience, for every sensory nerve, is stored! All along this nerve path, there are cells that make a “real time” comparison between the data they are sensing and what is newly arriving.
This produces 2 important results. 1. It explains how we can recall any experience in our entire life in less than a second. 2. It explains how our memories appear to be “full experiences”. That is, when a new experience arrives, the activated “comparison” cells trigger all the other comparison cells that are sensing their recorded data at the same time point! This second result directly leads to our “memory” consciousness. It also explains dreams, and the reality of hallucinations and PTSD.
Related to your observation of “sequences of text… pixels … imgs …. Phonemes…” my model agrees that, a short sequence, by itself, provides zero understanding. BUT, a very different phenomenon occurs in the brain when each word or short sequence of images, simultaneously, finds a lifetime of matches in the brain that are also made available for comparison. It is this “memory response system” that defines the “doctor” or “plumber”. Significantly, it provides a very pertinent model to explain the multiple ways the current LLM architectures are headed in the wrong direction.
Bruce, your architecture sounds extremely *plausible*, brain-like [unlike NNs that are brain-like in name only!]. Curious how you represent experiences, including non-verbal ones (eg the experience of tripping on a rock, or feeling the wind - there's no data, or more generally, no symbols in these).
Saty,
In my model, I view memories as “complex, streaming, associated, time-based, “perception experiences”. That is, what both humans and vertebrate animals “perceive” as an “experience” is the flow of all sensory signals through some pretty limited place in the brain, possibly at the “output” of the parietal lobe. Tripping on a rock, or feeling the wind, is simply the “experience” of the flow of signals from the entire body’s sensory system after the parietal lobe has processed them into a spatially coherent organization. As you say, there are no symbols at that point.
Now, continue the experience of “feeling the wind”. The parietal processed sensory nerve signals from the million sensors on the surface of the skin, that feel the fluttering coolness, are individually “streamed” into the volume of the brain that “memorizes” skin sensation. They are “output” into this volume as individual real-time data streams in exactly the same way tactile cells code their sensations. At the same time, on what computers would call a “parallel buss”, all those thousands of immediate sensations are broadcast individually to the chain of nerves memorizing the history for that individual nerve, for the entire sensory brain. When similar matches are detected, for the entire life memory of the individual animal, that prior experience is also sent back, in parallel fashion, to the parietal lobe, which just considers them an “associated” experience.
The result is, when we “feel” the wind, our primary “sensation” is just the signals from our skin cells. BUT, for every past experience, that the “comparator” nerves determine to be similar, those past experiences are blended into the current sensation. AND, what is actually stored as the current experience, is the BLENDED experience.
To address the “symbolic” issue, while the skin sensing process is occurring, other parts of the brain are simultaneously capturing input from all the other sensory systems: vision, balance and motion, temperature, sound, etc. The complex factor we call emotion is also being captured. A special part of the brain, that make us "human", is simultaneously capturing summaries of all of these.
A way to understand “symbology”, in this context, is to view “symbols” as just “unique” combinations of multiple sensations that we have been “trained” to memorize as important for particular experiences.