A bit off topic but I often think about if we developed the technology to simulate in real time a mass of about 4 pounds and the technology to do a cat scan (or something similar) with atomic granularity. We could sort of cheat when it came to AI and just take a human who already knows what we are trying to do, scan him, and simulate his brain. Never the less it seems we are very far from that possibility.
It's a very large unknown if a disembodied simulated human brain, even if it was a perfect copy, wouldn't be screamingly insane. All human brains we know of are embodied. Now, if you could also simulate (or at least stub out) the entire body, that might help, but that's a lot more than "four pounds"...
> It's a very large unknown if a disembodied simulated human brain, even if it was a perfect copy, wouldn't be screamingly insane.
What does "disembodied" mean here? Whatever you use to emulate a human brain is going to have a physical substrate and support system (body). It may be differently bodied, but its not going to be disembodied.
(Certainly we know -- and in some cases even have some understanding of the mechanisms -- that parts of the body besides the brain are relevant in controlling how the brain works, so any cognition simulation intended to approximate human thought is likely to need simulation of those parts as well as the brain in the narrow sense, whether through direct physical analogs or simulations of the effects through alternative means.)
>What does "disembodied" mean here? Whatever you use to emulate a human brain is going to have a physical substrate and support system (body). It may be differently bodied, but its not going to be disembodied.
If we surgically implanted a human head on a cow it would be "differently bodied" too, but it's obviously not what the parent means.
The casual use of "physical substrate and support system" as if it means the very specific "body" parent talks about, which is obviously the human body the simulated brain originated in, is bizarro.
