Spaceweaver Weinbaum's Profile

Where do human minds come from?

Maccone’s idea, published in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters, is a completely new approach to the paradox, based on the assumption that quantum mechanics is valid at all scales. He theoretically shows that entropy can both increase and decrease, but that it must always increase for phenomena that leave a trail of information behind.

As Maccone explains, the second law of thermodynamics is then reduced to a mere tautology: physics cannot study processes where entropy has decreased, due to a complete absence of information.

Perhaps that sounds a little overblown, but it's not. Who, dear reader, do you think you are? Do you think your mind is capable of independent judgment and largely directs the course of your life? Do you think that most of your decisions in life have been the product of your rational, conscious self? Do you believe you are in control of your life? Do you cherish ideas such as self-expression, a sense of autonomy and a distinct, self-authored identity? The chances are that, albeit with a few qualifications, most of your answers are yes. Indeed, given a pervasive culture which reinforces all these ideas, it would be a bit odd if you didn't.

This is such dramatic stuff that Matthew Taylor at the Royal Society of Arts, which has pioneered public engagement with this new research, argues that we are on the verge of a new Enlightenment.

The Blue Brain Project is not aiming at building just a single model, we are building an international facility that has the capability to build brain models. The facility roadmap is to gradually expand its capability and capacity to build whole brain models at ever greater levels of resolution.

we are close to testing a fundamental theory of how the brain generates a perceptual reality – the neural code.

Glia, in fact, are busy multitaskers, guiding the brain’s development and sustaining it throughout our lives. Glia also listen carefully to their neighbors, and they speak in a chemical language of their own. Scientists do not yet understand that language, but experiments suggest that it is part of the neurological conversation that takes place as we learn and form new memories.

All change in society can be traced back to the products of our minds.

It's reasonable to figure that since the technium is simply "that which the mind produces"