Saturday morning thought... My prediction is that the real "Bitter Lesson" (www.cs.utexas.edu/~eunsol/cour...) will occur when the 75-year confusing, of "computations of abstract models of properties of nature" (computers), with the actual natural computation of brain signalling physics, ends.

Having fun in the @braininspired.bsky.social complexity email forum. They are going through the Santa Fe compendium of complexity science historic papers (Vol 1) while wearing a Neuro-AI hat. Journal club zoom videos for each paper. I did Turing 1950. url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/tjRTCk8vpK...

My continuing campaign to peek out from behind a decade or two of lab obscurity ... Another podcast interview of yours truly in relation to "the hole in science" called "consciousness", and how we're going with it. Enjoy! url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/kuPsCD1jmr...

My continuing campaign to peek out from behind a decade or two of lab obscurity ... Another podcast interview of yours truly in relation to "the hole in science" called "consciousness", and how we're going with it. Enjoy! url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/kuPsCD1jmr...

Based on typical averages, an estimate of the active cell surface area that creates all signalling in the brain (action potential & direct EM field coupling) for a normal adult human brain (astrocytes + neurons) ..... it comes out at roughly 10,000 sq. m. 100m X 100m. It's a 1 Farad-ish capacitor.

@hossenfelder.bsky.social latest video has 10 science myths. Here's your #11 that you miss every time: 11. That scientific method creates observer independence. It actually creates observation independence. To see this you need the science of consciousness. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35782039/

And guess what? Those waves of activity are literally EM field. "What is it like to 'be' that EM field?" Like being conscious! Listen.... diamondmind.buzzsprout.com/2379515/epis...

@anilseth.bsky.social @garymarcus.bsky.social @irisvanrooij.bsky.social I completely forgot about this 2011 formal disproof of computational functionalism. It predicts AGI will likely never happen with general purpose computers. Sorry about the pay wall! www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1...

If you were building an inorganic artificial cortex with a view to replicating the cited paper's form of oscillatory computation, what would you be building? 1) a general purpose computer 2) inorganic chip with oscillatory behaviour based on the physics that does it in brains. 3) I don't know.

Deadline is today! However, if you've missed it (heaven forbid) I am told that submissions that arrive up until *Sunday* will still be forwarded to the editor ... so its not too late!

Ilya Sutskever asks “Why can’t digital computers do the same [as AI]?” The reason is that the brain isn’t digital. Digital AI needs nuclear plants. The brain runs on 20W. Analog computing is vastly more efficient—and the brain constantly generates the raw material: waves. youtu.be/zuZ2zaotrJs?...

20 cited postulated ToC. 1 "winner" somewhere in that list. 35 years of "correlates-of" science is in its adversarial collaborative end game, a kind of heat-death that reveals the explanatory emptiness of correlates of subjective experience. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I was a guest on Tam Hunt's "Diamond Mind" podcast episode 10. It's on EM Field theories of consciousness. It was fun to do. Editing it down to 1hr must have been a tough job. I think it works. Enjoy! url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/9ZmQCVAGLr...

A great thread by Matthew Larkum on our recent paper🧵 He clarifies how we model the experiment with the Turing machine and ends his thread with the hard choice the computational functionalist must face😢

I was a guest on Tam Hunt's "Diamond Mind" podcast episode 10. It's on EM Field theories of consciousness. It was fun to do. Editing it down to 1hr must have been a tough job. I think it works. Enjoy! url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/9ZmQCVAGLr...

Is Bernie Baars listening?

New paper! Cognitive independence and interactions between cerebral hemispheres doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... #neuroscience

There are 3 cargo cults operating in science: 1) The science of AI 2) The science of consciousness 3) Particle physics. Notice that all 3 span the full breadth of the physical sciences. I'm here to say that in the end the solution to all three will be the brain. Here's 3: youtu.be/XqoyTSAF5g0?...

How natural general intelligence gets to grips with natural physics ... In a way that no generative "AI" will ever understand: www.facebook.com/share/v/1GVZ...

Autonomy getting some attention. Finally. By @tonyzador.bsky.social. But I would elevate it even further: if an agent cannot autonomously acquire new càpability its intelligence is zero. www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/neur...

@johanneskleiner.bsky.social Hi, Please add me to the consciousness starter packs. Happy 2025! Cheers Colin

Finally someone attempts an estimate of the conditions under which computational functionalism HYPOTHESIS is true. When you have to convert solar systems into compute and still fail, don't we get the latitude to question assumptions? We need the same analysis done from multiple directions.

Scientists assuming that computational functionalism hypothesis is operating as a law of nature...beware. Not proved! This is an honest assessment of the amount of compute likely to be needed for CF to deliver what it promises. Even if it's 90% wrong it's a CF showstopper.

Dissociating intelligence from consciousness. Koch/Tononi/et. al./IIT have an empirically unproved hypothesis that a zombie can reach human level AGI. I call BS. Consciousness is obviously nature's solution to the symbol grounding problem. What do you think? arxiv.org/abs/2412.04571

What are the prospects for AI that is, or irresistibly appears to be, conscious? Here’s a substantially revised version of my paper “Conscious artificial intelligence and biological naturalism” - many thanks to many folks for super-helpful comments osf.io/preprints/ps...

Chess, Jeopardy, GO, image classifiers, LLM: The paradox of the AGI goalposts, a rainbow shaped goal forever just out of reach. An uncanny failure boundary exploration motivated by the dangling AGI carrot. Will the ARC prize gold touch the ends of the AGI rainbow? If it doesn't, what would?

Listen to Earl, please!

Signs of life here, but try as I might ... No proper conversations can be elicited. It's like being in a park with 500 equidistant dogs barking every now and then, but otherwise en-bubbling each other.

The Starter Pack is growing. Now 92 people strong! For those who decided to "follow all" earlier, maybe do it again to have the new people! There is still room for more! 🧠🧪 The Brain—is wider than the Sky— For—put them side by side— The one the other will contain With ease—and you—beside—

Functionally effective ephaptic brain signalling was proved in 2018 by the Durand lab at the population level. Now the Anastassiou lab has nailed its origins at the neuron level. This is a done deal. At last we can reorient EM field to centre stage. This has huge impact. doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

EM Field theories of consciousness have taken their proper share of the stage. Our special issue is finally in the bag! www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....

It's time for the left-field entry to arise. History tells us the breakthrough right in front of everyone & will cut loose whole islands of wrong-thinking. Earthquakes in hierarchies of relevance, eminence & funding. Thomas Kuhn to the rescue! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Cool short review on the cerebellum, not so simple after all... doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... #neuroscience

Our Research Topic "Electromagnetic Field Theories of Consciousness: Opportunities and Obstacles" is amongst the most read/downloaded special issues at Frontiers. It has had 80,000+ views and downloads! Alas, this might be the only community that cares! protect-au.mimecast.com/s/PgYlCXLKNw...

Thoughts, anyone?; Losing the privacy of thought seems to be a moral minefield. futurism.com/neoscope/sci...

Deep learning under the magnifying glass. Includes a broad peer commentary. AFAICT, none of it contacts the difference between abstract models of X and an artificial X. The assumed identity sails right through it all, into 2024. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Last night, University of Melbourne. Anil Seth does the first of a series of presentations. Good to see him here! But .... The consciousness problem is expected to "dissolve" under the magnifying glass of cognitive/computational approaches. Is this what it has come to? As good as it gets? Sigh.

Here's a Disney robot designed to be cartoon-expressive. Its endearing vibe, projected by the viewer, powerfully hooks into the observer. But "what is it like to be" the robot? Nobody can scientifically claim to have an answer to this question. spectrum.ieee.org/disney-robot

My first bsky posting (consciousness community). I operate at the intersection of machine intelligence and the science of consciousness. Keen to see consciousness science results, their discussions & the social milieu directly attached to the science. Bring it! Cheers Colin