<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title><style type="text/css">p.MsoNormal,p.MsoNoSpacing{margin:0}</style></head><body><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Marcus and glen (and others on occasion) have posted frequently on the "algorithmic "equivalent" of [some feature] of consciousness, human emotion, etc.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">I am always confronted with the question of of "how equivalent?" I am almost certain that they are not saying anything close to absolute equivalence - i.e., that the brain/mind is executing the same algorithm albeit in, perhaps, a different programming language. But, are their assertions meant to be "analogous to," "a metaphor for," or some other semi/pseudo equivalence? <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Perhaps all that is being said is we have two black boxes into which we put the same inputs and arrive at the same outputs. Voila! We expose the contents of one black box, an algorithm executing on silicon. From that we conclude it does not matter what is happening inside the other black box—whatever it is, our, now, white box is an 'equivalent'.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Put another way: If I have two objects, A and B, each with an (ir)regular edge. in this case the irregular edge of A is an inverse match to that of B—when put together there are no gaps between the two edges. They "fit."<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Assume that A and B have some means to detect if they "fit" together. I can think of algorithms that could determine fit, a simplistic iteration across all points to see if there was a gap between it and its neighbor, to some kind of collision detection.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Is it the case that whatever means used by A and B to detect fit, it is <u><b><i>merely</i></b></u> the equivalent of such an algorithm?<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">The roots of this question go back to my first two published papers, in <u>AI Magazine</u> (then the 'journal of record' for AI research); one critical of the computational metaphor, the second a set of alternative metaphors of mind. An excerpt relevant to the above example of fit.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>Tactilizing Processor<br></i></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>Conrad draws his inspiration from the ability of an enzyme to combine with a substrate on the basis of the physical congruency of their respective shapes (topography). This is a generalized version of the lock-and-key mechanism as the hormone-receptor matching discussed by Bergland. When the topographic shape of an enzyme (hormone) matches that of a substrate (receptor), a simple recognize- by-touch mechanism (like two pieces of a puzzle fitting together) allows a simple decision, binary state change, or process to take place, hence the label “tactilizing processor.”</i><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Hormones and enzymes, probably/possibly, lack the ability to compute (execute algorithms), so, at most, the black box equivalence might be used here.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">[BTW, tactilizing processors were built, but were extremely slow (speed of chemical reactions) but had some advantages derived from parallelism. Similar 'shape matching' computation was explored in DNA computing as well.]<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">My interest in the issue is the (naive) question about how our understanding of mind/consciousness is fatally impeded by putting all our research eggs into the simplistic 'algorithm box'?<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">It seems to me that we have the CS/AI/ML equivalent of the quantum physics world where everyone is told to "shut up and compute" instead of actually trying to understand the domain and the theory.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">davew<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div></body></html>