Le Repteux

Yes, I know that the speed of light is the same for any observer: this is precisely what causes doppler effect in my animation. But since that speed is not instantaneous, if the atoms have to stay synchronized to stay linked, that speed also causes their small steps if they are accelerated from the outside. If we follow these steps from the outside like on my animation, given their frequency, their speed can be calculated from their length, and their direction is the direction of the straight line which goes from one rest position to another. But if you are one of these atoms, all you can see is doppler effect, and since you try to stay linked as precisely as possible with the other atom, you have to nullify that effect by moving a little at each light pulse that you see. If you are the outsider observer, you are indeed the reference, but if you are one of the atoms, light is the only reference.

I think that I can answer in reference to light, which would then be a universal reference frame for the atoms. Because if the small steps' frequency of my animation is constant, and if we could observe them, then their length and their direction would indicate respectively the speed and the direction of the system's inertial motion.

Since I can copy-paste here a textbook definition of a standing wave, and since I know that I will agree with that definition, I imagine that what you really want to know is what I mean by a cerebral standing wave. Is that so?

A standing wave on a rope, for instance, is reflected at its ends and has to be kept alive by adding energy to the wave at its own frequency. To be observable, a standing wave has to be limited, and it has to be kept alive. The brain is de facto a limited environment, and its neurons permanently keep the cerebral waves alive since we can observe them even when we sleep.

Let me repeat my question differently: if a particular inertial motion had an internal mechanism that indicates the speed and the direction of the acceleration that had caused it, would we still need a reference frame to define them?

The cerebral waves that we observe are forced to stay in the brain, a confined area, and they never end: they thus are standing waves by definition.

It is based on mass, and mass is foundational.

If I had that competence, I would already be doing some experimentation. I am here to discuss about a possibility, and to interest experts and non-experts about it. Do you know precisely enough about the latest research results so as to be able to propose a way to explore this idea?

Wave properties are well known: if the brain works as a wave, then it must be able to manipulate it as we do with light waves, and we should be able to locate these functions in its different parts. For instance, there should be a physical place that can concentrate the wave, another that can diffract it, another that can refract it, another that can reflect it, and so on.

Hi Ophiolite, My courage is not so much with trying to learn more about what we do not already know, as it is for facing the disgrace of my fellow humans. All my speculations about mind and matter come from the same idea though, which is quite simple at the beginning: the fact that an instantaneous interaction would be unobservable, whether it would be by neurons or by atoms, and that it would thus be useless. With many others, I think that nature hates to be useless. I agree that it is a bit selfish to think that nature has chosen me to show its usefulness, but who cares as long as it is useful to us all. Gary Marcus said: Hi Acme, My proposal of a cerebral standing wave entertained between layers of neurons is one possible answer to that questioning, but to my knowledge, it has not been investigated up to now. Why not investigate it altogether? It shall not bite!

No comments, so here is how I think that the brain mechanism produces chance. Firstly, let us admit that the informations that penetrate our mind are kept alive in the form of a cerebral standing wave. Secondly, let us admit that the precision of the wave frequency, which is responsible for the precision of the informations, is due to the precision of the neuron's pulses, and that to accept new informations, the wave uses the imprecision of the synapses, which cannot change the wave frequency, but can create delays in it, the same way the constant moon orbital frequency cycle around the earth is continuously delayed by the advance of the moon apogee. We know how neurons emit their pulses: they integrate the incoming pulses from their synapses and react when the sum of their voltages reaches a precise amount. Since each neuron receives millions of pulses during the time it emits only one, the chance to get the right amount of voltage within a negligible time delay is important, and since there is millions of interconnected neurons giving their pulse at the same pace, they tend to stay synchronized together from layer to layer. Even if this mechanism is precise, synapses can still integrate pulses that are not part of it, and these pulses can have a real effect on the wave with time, this way, the wave can keep the old informations afresh while it can progressively integrate new informations from the outside if they persist. But there is more to it since, even if no new information is given to it, that wave can accept small gaps and vary in intensity and in direction inside the brain with time without losing its frequency, thus while keeping its informations alive. To me, it means that old ideas can mix together randomly and can get new directions or new intensities with time without us being able to control them. This is the kind of chance that I meant in the beginning, because if, by chance, the new combination of ideas is beneficial to the individual that caries it, it might replace the old ideas in his brain, and it might influence others around him. Do you agree that our mind can intrinsically produce that kind of chance, and if not, how do you explain our capability to improvise or our appetite for speculation?

Hi Acme, To me, an intuition is a good feeling about an embryo of an idea, which may or may not be right, so that it still has to be proven. It is thus not the contrary of a proof, it is just that it has to be proven, but if Gödel means that we know that the idea is right before proving that it is, I do not agree with him.

Sorry about the delay, I continue: On another topic on intuition, I started to explain how mind produces chance, and I will continue here since the two topics are linked. I raised the hypothesis that our main memory was due to a standing wave entertained between the neurons, and not from the neurons themselves, which sticks to my previous hypothesis that mass was due to the interaction between particles, and not to the particles themselves as we thought. I attribute the standing wave itself to the neurons trying to stay synchronized together even if their interaction is not instantaneous, which is the same principle that produces mass, but a neuron cannot move to stay synchronized with the incoming pulse like a particle do, so something else has to change in the standing wave process if it has to absorb new informations, and I think that the synapses could do that job, because they are a lot less precise than the neurons. (If you are not convinced that a wave can store a lot of informations, and that it can store them for a long period of time, think about the light that caries information from distant galaxies.) Synapses are known to produce and use different neurotransmitters that induce different feelings or emotions, but I postulate that they also induce our intuitions, which I describe as good feelings about moves that we never tried before. How can we decide to try such risky moves? How can we be happy to try them since we know they can hurt? This reward is different from the one we get when we satisfy our needs. This reward is not about the present, but about the future. It is not as necessary as a need, but it might help to satisfy them in the future. The chance we take when we have an intuition is about the future, which is unknown until it happens to us. This is exactly the kind of chance a mutation gives to a specie: it might be helpful, but it might not, all depends on a coincidence between the mutation and the environment of the individual that carries it. A new idea might be helpful, but it might not be also, all depends on a coincidence between the idea and its intellectual environment. If no comment are added, I will continue with more explanations on how the standing wave can produce chance.

OK, in view of the avalanche of answers, let me add something to my original post. I was asking how mind could produce chance, but let me explain more precisely how I think it uses it. I compared directly mutations to intuitions, arguing that if mutations can produce the evolution of a specie by means of natural selection of the environment, then intuitions can also produce the evolution of an idea by means of intellectual selection. But why would ideas work the same as species? Because anything that evolves follows the same rule: it keeps the same once it has evolved because everything we know resist to change, but it uses chance to overcome its resistance to change if its environment changes.

So long then, and chance be with you and with your intuitions!

It might not tell you anything, but it does to me. I already said that I suspected the neurons to entertain a standing wave between them to stock their informations, what do you think of that idea? Isn't it similar to Doug's strange loop? How about discussing how that wave absorbs, changes, and returns an information to its environment? It was my idea, sorry if it looked as if it was yours. I used it to show that the way cars move was not comparable to the way our ideas evolves. Yes but to be comparable, the two phenomenon should be self-induced, and traffic is not. To me, it mainly explains that hazard might have something to do with the efficiency of our intelligence, which is quite different than what we thought it was. Isn't it to you?

If you wish, but what about the hardware problem? How do neurons produce memory for instance? Good try! (Here comes your dinner Doug) When we talk about mind, it is the mind that talks about itself, but a car cannot think, so it can certainly not think about itself. If it could, it might ask itself why it exists and what it is meant for, and then it could realize that knowing how it works might explain part of those questions. I say "part of" because I think that we will never find the end of it, but I also think that it will always be interesting to discover new things. Because biologic mutations also happen by chance, that they get useful to the species by chance, and that we know that fairies do not produce them.

If intuitions are about having the impression that a new idea is not going to hurt, then having the impression that something wrong is going to happen is not an intuition, but a premonition. I think that we have premonitions and intuitions all the time, but I also think that they come from our mind being able to speculate about the future, which is a good thing if we can verify that our previsions do not hurt, but useless if we cannot, and it can even become dangerous for us if we believe in them before having had time to verify them. I know that atoms are not directly responsible for what we think, but what I meant is that the phenomenon that produces motion between the atoms also produces evolution between our ideas. This phenomenon does not only explain how we think, but it also explains how the brain works physically, which Doug's ideas could not explain since, from what I had read of them, they are only about logics. As I said, if the small steps are right, understanding intelligence will not be a problem of software, but a hardware one. I do not conclude that it is not interesting, but I conclude that it will not help us to understand the physical mechanism that produces ideas. On the other hand, if I consider that the small steps are real, I realize that it was no use trying to understand intelligence without knowing about the physical mechanism underlying memory and feelings and intuitions. If instinct is about invariable automatisms, then intuition must be about variable ones. Since automatisms are difficult to change by definition because they are unconscious, what a better way to change them than without any conscious suggestion? An intuition gives the impression of coming from nowhere, and we certainly cannot produce one intentionally, then why not consider that it happens by chance?

Of course, but all our words do not end up in a dictionary. I am not reluctant, I would read it if I had it, I only want to compare my own ideas to yours directly, without having to go through Doug's mind. Since you know his ideas, I though you could compare them to mine and tell me what you think of mine, but I guess it is too soon for you to do that. Since I think that intuitions rely on a lottery process, I always try not to hurt anybody when I implement them.

Thank's! I use reverso.net as a french/english dictionnary, and when I do not face an invented word, it works very well. You probably have the impression that it covers them because I did not have time to explain all my theory yet. For instance, I think that our main memory mechanism depends on a self-sustained standing wave made of nervous pulses exchanged between the brain neurons, and that our intuitions come from the imprecisions that create a kind of a lottery out of that standing wave with time. That way, even if our resistance to change comes from each atom's own resistance to acceleration involved in the process, the outcome stays uncertain. Moreover, I draw your attention on the strange loop potential of that personal standing wave.

Thank's Acme! It took me a few years until I decide to try, and since I have been here, I learn new words every day, like kudos for example, which I had never heard before. Here is an interview of Hofstadter where lots of people left long comments. I read many of them to get an idea of what its conscience is really about, but all I get is the usual philosophic stuff that does not explain physically what it is. To me, that kind of thinking will never permit to understand our brain. We need to be more concrete about it if we want to reproduce it artificially. It is not just a software problem, it is also a hardware one. We first have to discover how a physical phenomenon can produce the kind of memory we have. I have my own idea about it, but it is only an intuition.

Ok, since nobody seems to be struck by the evidence that my bone is interesting, I will add some more flesh around it. What about the Twins Paradox? That paradox is due to the lack of a universal reference frame, but the small steps of my animation could indicate the direction and the speed of the motion if we could see them, thus giving us the possibility of knowing which one of the twins moves with regard to the other. What do you think of that flesh? Smells good, no?

I was using the term cope in the sense of supporting the observations, but my english is poor since I do not use it often. What I meant is what you said. If our resistance to change comes from the atom's one, then the principle of action/reaction should apply, which means that resistance to change implies permanent change, since atoms that undergo an acceleration acquire a permanent change even if they resist to it. Hi Hype, It was not my intention to advertise myself, I just wanted to explain where my idea about intuition came from, but if you mean that I should not refer myself to my own speculative topics to argue on a scientific topic on psychology, I shall stick to speculative topics.

A theory is unfounded by definition, it only has to cope with observations, and I think that mine does, but I did not find a way to prove it for the moment. The way it applies to our own resistance to change is nevertheless surprising, and to biologic evolution too. It means that our resistance to change is not a psychological issue, but an intrinsic phenomenon affecting any material body. By the same token, it means that mind and the conscience that comes with it is a material phenomenon. But can we say that intuition and imagination, the only two functions that can change our ideas, are also material, since they depend on hazard to manifest themselves? If we compare with mutations, their biologic counterpart, it seams that we could answer yes, because mutations are real, but the dreams that our imagination induces are so unreal that it is difficult to believe that they come from a real phenomenon.

Hi Deepak, To me, intuitions happen by chance, so yes, I think that your description of what struck the mind of the scientist fits my definition, but not what happens after, because intuitions do not necessarily work each time you have one, at least for me. Maybe I did not give a good definition of the theorem, but I applied it to my proper definition of the mind the same way Hofstader did, without the maths though. It is a fundamental link: my definition of consciousness comes from the definition of mass, which is resistance to acceleration and inertial motion. But since I think that mass is due to the interaction between the atoms, then I infer that the resistance to change of our automatisms and their constancy is due to the interaction between the neurons, which, like the atoms of my animation, proceed to stay synchronized together even when a change in their frequency occurs. If you do not understand what happens to the small steps between the atoms when they undergo a change in their frequency, you will probably not be able to understand what an intuition is for me.