I mean simulating muscle contractions treats it like a clockwork machine; that's not very impressive. If you go deeper you can look at internals of cells, metabolism, chemical energy, protein interactions. That's how the worm works.
This is like simulating a computer by using a model of RAM and CPU, when you really need to model electricity & magnetism (and stray gamma rays) for a true simulation.
Ah I see... so it sounds like I misunderstood. You're calling for a higher-fidelity physical model, not something metaphysical :)
I still think it's impressive if we can get a decent-fidelity model of C. elegans behavior at the project's current level of abstraction.
I wonder how much behavioral difference we'd see from a lower level of simulation? After all, you can do a lot with a "RAM and CPU" level simulation of a computer...
I think the example is not great. The problem is not that we could be doing better, but rather that without a more granular view, the model will simply not work.
More like trying to model the pixels on a screen without accessing the underlying program that's making decisions on what to show.
On that topic: it can't necessarily be ruled out that they might have a soul. (In the sense of possessing consciousness.) Less likely the fewer degrees of freedom you have, and certainly seems like a long shot for ~300 neurons, but we don't know where the lines may be drawn and we may not know for a very long time.
I'm noncommittal toward the prospect that a C. elegans might be conscious (though I doubt it). But here I was using "soul" to mean something metaphysical, requiring something beyond the physical configuration of those ~300 neurons to explain.
It's impossible to really rule out such a thing but at the same time I don't think there's any way we can understand how to actually simulate or even identify that.
A soul is not simply consciousness. A soul usually means some non-physical entity that can exist independently from the physical body (e.g. when you die).
How do you know it is pure nonsense? We actually have no scientific evidence either way. There is a reason why discussing the "hard problem of consciousness" is so popular. There are many people now advocating for a universal consciousness, i.e. that all space time has intrinsically a mind-like element that is merely "tapped into" by physical bodies.
It's foolish to pretend that it's a solved problem when it's not. At the present moment we don't actually have a solid idea either way.
>We actually have no scientific evidence either way.
That's how we know it's nonsense. When there's no evidence for something it doesn't mean that it's 50% Likely to be true.
If I told you there's a dragon in my garage you should immediately think that I'm lying because you've never seen any prior evidence of dragons anywhere.
Mathematically, things with no evidence for their existence don't exist.
Sagan’s Dragon doesn’t really apply here, though. Because, while we don’t have evidence for something non-physical behind mind, we do have a phenomenon - conscious subjective experience - occurring with no real physical explanation anywhere in sight. Or even conceivable, really. Chalking it up to a specific religious idea of a soul or anything is a bridge too far, of course, as is believing anything one thing with more fervor than just a hunch, but...
Well, the analogy falls apart because whether there’s a dragon in the garage really is something physically verifiable, and it’s hard to know if where the there that’s there comes from is. But it’s a little like if you occasionally heard loud stomping noises or roars coming from your garage, and things in there were turning up with big bites taken out of them or singed with fire. No matter how much you look you can’t find the cause. Is that a dragon? Dragons don’t exist...but who knows?
Yeah I definitely agree with this. Many people can and do perceive the inexplainable issue directly. I had a discussion about that recently here on HN, about those who can perceive a "hard problem of consciousness" and those who cannot. Basically some people do not perceive any disparity between a totally physical model of the mind and our conscious subjective experience, while I and others personally do. It is a bit tiring to constantly be called delusional because I feel that disparity
Right but the idea that there are aspects of our minds that don't exist within this physical universe is not outlandish or bizarre, it's a very reasonable and historically defended position.
EDIT: Also not sure what this bizarre statement is:
> Mathematically, things with no evidence for their existence don't exist.
1. How is that related to mathematics? Can you provide a theorem or some definitions here?
2. How is evidence related to mathematics?
3. Why is mathematics relevant when talking about whether or not our mind has non-physical aspects?
>...the idea that there are aspects of our minds that don't exist within this physical universe is not outlandish or bizarre...
That's where we disagree. Can you give me an example of anything that doesn't exist within this physical universe? I'm not familiar with the concept of a "thing" that isn't physical.
Sorry about being confusing with the last sentence. I'll try and address your questions:
1. When we talk about the likelihood of something being true we are now discussing probabilities, which have a long and well proven track record of obeying the laws of statistics. Statistics are quite often counter-intuitive and our brains don't think in terms of the math that governs the actual outcomes
A good example is the birthday problem [1]. Imagine we had a room full of people and we wanted to know what the odds are that two of those people in the room had the same birthday. Obviously the more people we have, the more likely we are to have a match, but how many people do you need to get to that point?
It turns out that with just 23 people in the room there's a 50% chance of two people having the same birthday. Most people's intuition leads them to believe that for 50% you'd need 365/2 = 182.5 people, but once there's 70 people in a room, you're almost certain to have a match with a probability of 99.9%. This is a good example of a case where not knowing the math will lead your predictions of the world to be incorrect.
2. When we discuss evidence we are trying to figure out the probability of something, thus the rules of probabilities apply. One of the fundamental theorems of statistics is Bayes' Theorem [2], which at its core tells you how to calculate the probability of an event given another event.
To motivate that, here's a more realistic example: "A patient goes to see a doctor. The doctor performs a test with 99 percent reliability--that is, 99 percent of people who are sick test positive and 99 percent of the healthy people test negative. The doctor knows that only 1 percent of the people in the country are sick. Now the question is: if the patient tests positive, what are the chances the patient is sick?"
If you answered 99% then you'd not only be wrong, but you'd have misdiagnosed your patient. The correct answer here is 50% [3].
3. To bring it all together: to properly know things one must understand the laws of mathematics. This applies not just to problems that obviously involve probabilities, but everything in general.
At it's core, I think our disagreement revolves around this idea of non-physicality and the belief that there are things that aren't governed by mathematics. Everything is physical and obeys the laws of physics which themselves are governed by the laws of mathematics.
Is "mathematics" a thing in our physical universe? Many people argue it's an abstract set of constructions with no physical reality in themselves. Sounds kind of outlandish and bizarre according to your criteria.
> Everything is physical and obeys the laws of physics which themselves are governed by the laws of mathematics.
If you define "physical" to mean "literally everything" then of course having something outside of Physics is logically impossible. That is a different definition to the work "physical" that we are working with in terms of the mind. In that case "physical" doesn't mean "literally everything" but rather more like "those things that correspond to an external, verifiable, objective reality". For you, ideas and concepts would be considered physical, but that is not the case for the definition of "physical" I mentioned, which is far more common in both religion and philosophy.
In this case we would say that ideas and concepts are not physical. So an easy answer to your question "Can you give me an example of anything that doesn't exist within this physical universe? I'm not familiar with the concept of a "thing" that isn't physical." would be literally any concept or idea. However since you have a universalist (and thus totally useless) definition of "physical", of course it is impossible for me to argue that there is anything outside of that.
PS. As a doctor in quantum physics myself, I can tell you that statistics and probability is certainly a way of modelling outcomes, and not in any way considered a fundamental element of reality.
I'm afraid I still don't understand. Are you arguing that there is some utility in considering "concepts or ideas" non-physical from an ontological perspective? Because I think we both agree they're solidly physical in the sense that a "thought" can be reduced to chemical signaling.
On the QM side, I'm pretty sure that you're incorrect in your postscript. It was my understanding that certain physical processes can only be understood though probability and that talking in terms of wavefunctions is the most correct way to do that.
> Because I think we both agree they're solidly physical in the sense that a "thought" can be reduced to chemical signaling.
I don’t agree with that. I think there is an inseparable spiritual element that justifies the subjective experience.
For the QM part, that still does not mean that ontologically the probabilities have a physical reality. Google “interpretations of quantum mechanics”, we have very little idea of what quantum mechanics actually means yet. We can set up the problems and do the maths but no one even knows what exactly it means to do a measurement (again Google “measurement problem”). I am an expert in quantum mechanics (it is my job) so I would be happy to answer questions about it in the morning.
I think you're getting mixed up. Consciousness is obviously real (because we directly experience it) and is a hard problem because it's so weird.
The soul is not obviously real. There's zero evidence for it. It's just some random hypothesis that doesn't even explain anything. It's like reincarnation. Just a nice idea that someone made up with zero evidence, no mechanism and no use. Clearly nonsense.
How do you know it is nonsense? I don’t understand how you’ve categorically decided this. I’m a Buddhist so I don’t believe in a soul but I do believe in non physical aspects of the mind and also rebirth. It is actually possible to verify these things by Buddhist practise. You have decided it definitely isn’t true, but you haven’t got any proof either way. How is it then obviously “clearly nonsense”? That is just your preconception. If you are a scientist you should at least be agnostic, since we do not have evidence either way.
Edit: the real website mentions a lot more like the neural connections
https://openworm.org/