Look ma, no mind

[Le Repteux]

Hi everybody,

 

Its me again, with a subject related to the one on mass entitled "Look ma, no maths".

 

It is related by means of the principle of mass that the small steps account for. If mass is due to resistance to the change in frequency of the steps that induces the inertial constant motion of the atoms, then this principle might have something to do with our own psychological resistance to change because it induces our constant automatisms too. We have the bad habbit to disqualify our own resistance, because we rely on the resistance of orthers to detect our own one, and because we accuse them to resist without noticing that they need our resistance to do that, but the resistance of the atoms is not disqualifying at all, it is simply an action/reaction resistance: without this resistance, we would have no mass, we would accelerate instantly, and the bodies around us would not have any materiality. What if we tried to consider our own resistance as normal for a moment? Can we, or are we too subjective to do that? How could we describe the process of thinking considering that our ideas are only subjective and that we absolutely have to resist to other's ideas if we want to develop our own? If we consider that our ideas are all automatisms, then how do they change if they resist to change the same way a body does? A question that brings us back to finding how the small step's frequency changes if it resists to change.

 

To solve that equation, I had the idea of considering how a specie changes even if it has to preserve its main characteristics: it uses chance. It changes if, by chance, a propper mutation happens to one of its members. Then what if the change in direction and speed of an atom's steps was due to chance, and what if changing our ideas was due to chance also. If it is so, it means that I had this idea by chance and that you might agree with it if I am lucky. But what kind of mechanism could produce chance in our brain, and what would be the use for such a mechanism in an intelligent brain? Could it be inherent to intelligence? Could it be the secret that explains its impredictability?

Edited June 15, 2014 by Le Repteux

[Le Repteux]

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.

[Le Repteux]

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.

[Le Repteux]

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?

Edited July 7, 2014 by Le Repteux

[Acme]

Full article: >> The Trouble With Brain Science

 

...

The controversy serves as a reminder that we scientists are not only far from a comprehensive explanation of how the brain works; were also not even in agreement about the best way to study it, or what questions we should be asking.

...

Biology isnt elegant the way physics appears to be. The living world is bursting with variety and unpredictable complexity, because biology is the product of historical accidents, with species solving problems based on happenstance that leads them down one evolutionary road rather than another. No overarching theory of neuroscience could predict, for example, that the cerebellum (which is involved in timing and motor control) would have vastly more neurons than the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain most associated with our advanced intelligence).

...

Neuroscience awaits a similar breakthrough [to genetics]. We know that there must be some lawful relation between assemblies of neurons and the elements of thought, but we are currently at a loss to describe those laws. We dont know, for example, whether our memories for individual words inhere in individual neurons or in sets of neurons, or in what way sets of neurons might underwrite our memories for words, if in fact they do. ...

[Ophiolite]

Le Repeteux, it is a courageous person indeed who attempts to answer one of the big questions of science without having an immensely solid grounding in current theory and years of experience in researching that area. So, I applaud and stand amazed by your courage. To attempt to answer more than one big question, as you seem to be, leaves me quite speechless.

[Acme]

Le Repeteux, it is a courageous person indeed who attempts to answer one of the big questions of science without having an immensely solid grounding in current theory and years of experience in researching that area. So, I applaud and stand amazed by your courage. To attempt to answer more than one big question, as you seem to be, leaves me quite speechless.

I think I remember Shakespeare speaking to this.

 

The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life.

~ William Shakespeare ~

[Le Repteux]

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:

We dont know, for example, whether our memories for individual words inhere in individual neurons or in sets of neurons, or in what way sets of neurons might underwrite our memories for words, if in fact they do. ...

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!

Edited July 13, 2014 by Le Repteux

[Acme]

...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!

How would you test for such a thing?

[Le Repteux]

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.

[Acme]

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.

That's all well & good. What I mean is for you to describe an experiment or experiments -in detail- that would identify and characterize your hypothetical waves.

[Le Repteux]

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?

[Acme]

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?

I think the idea is baseless, so no.

[Le Repteux]

It is based on mass, and mass is foundational.

[Acme]

It is based on mass, and mass is foundational.

Yes well, I have discussed with you why foundational things may be responsible for phenomena and yet irrelevant to them. Standing waves are well defined and unless you can describe an exact mechanism by which they manifest in the brain then invoking them is meaningless.

[Le Repteux]

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.

[Ophiolite]

That does not match any definition of a standing wave I am familiar with. Can you provide me with a link that would verify such a definition?

[Le Repteux]

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.

[Ophiolite]

You are simply repeating your argument, an argument I found unconvincing. I repeat, do you have a reference to a textbook, or peer reviewed journal that offers a definition that matches yours?

[Le Repteux]

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?

[Ophiolite]

No. For the third time, you have made an assertion. The assertion appears to me to be vague and fails to match my understanding of what constitutes a standing wave. I am asking you to provide me with a clear, accepted definition from either a peer reviewed journal article, or from a textbook. In the former case I would hope you would provide a link to the paper, in the latter case the title, author, publisher of the textbook and the page number on which the definition appears.

 

This is the accepted practice on this and other science forums when one is asked to justify questionable assertions.

 

Thank you for your attention.

[Le Repteux]

I decided to test my luck here because there is a forum for speculative theories and because I did not find anything of the sort on french speaking scientific forums, but I am neither a scientist nor a student in science. I only had an idea about mass that seems to apply to our own resistance to change, and I try to find people that know more about sciences than me to discuss it with me. It was my own definition of a standing wave that I gave, and as I said, I will agree with a more precise one if you provide it. By asking me the same thing three times, you make me feel as if I was dumb, and since I still do not understand what you want exactly, you make me feel as if I was going to be admonished. Was it your intention?

Edited July 17, 2014 by Le Repteux

[Ophiolite]

Let me be as clear as possible. If anyone here is dumb, it is I. I am not well versed in standing waves, but I have some vague recollection of their character from my undergraduate physics classes and subsequent reading. You appear to claim that because 'brain waves' are confined to the brain they must be standing waves. This appears to me to be completely wrong.

 

My persistent questioning has two objectives.

1. To find out if my understanding of what a standing wave is, is right, or wrong. If you had been able to provide an 'official' definition that matched yours, then I would know I was wrong.

2. In the absence of that 'official' definition you should realise you are mistaken in calling these standing waves. If that part of your hypothesis is wrong, other parts many be wrong also. That should help you to either improve your idea, or abandon it.

 

(And if you persist in believing your idea is right when it is wrong, then yes - my intention is also to admonish - that is how science works. Scientists say to each other "Don't be so damn silly.")

[Le Repteux]

Confinement is one of the characteristics of a standing wave, and the other is that it is stationary. It might be due to flow, like a stationary wave on a river for instance, and by the interference of two opposite waves of the same frequency, like on a rope that is shaken at the same frequency at its two ends. This is from wiki, and if you insist in asking me for textbook definitions, I am afraid that we can get nowhere, because I feel bizarre when you do that: instead, why don't you put the definition yourself and ask me to show how it fits my explanations? Now about the cerebral waves that I am talking about, I do not know if they fit exactly the definition of standing waves, but I know that there are such waves because we observe them. What I propose is that the waves can contain the brain informations while being kept alive in a loop, and that the different parts of the brain can manipulate them the way we use tools to manipulate waves.

[Ophiolite]

So, provide me with evidence that their are stationary waves in the brain. I've already admitted to great ignorance in this area. I'm trying to learn, but for that I need facts from you, not opinions from you.