CHUNGCHEONGBUK-DO, South Korea, May 5, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Within some circles in the scientific community, debate rages about whether computers will achieve technological singularity (TS) or strong artificial intelligence (AI)--in other words, self-recognition or human consciousness within a computer--within the next few decades. Now, however, a Korean quantum physicist has shown that computers will never be able to duplicate human consciousness or be programmed to do so, because they lack the fundamental . . . well, humanity. And his research may finally answer questions that have long stymied brain science researchers.
In his paper, "Non-computability of Consciousness," Daegene Song proves human consciousness cannot be computed. Song arrived at his conclusion through quantum computer research in which he showed there is a unique mechanism in human consciousness that no computing device can simulate.
"Among conscious activities, the unique characteristic of self-observation cannot exist in any type of machine," Song explained. "Human thought has a mechanism that computers cannot compute or be programmed to do."
And therein lies the kernel of truth that could resolve two problems researchers have until now been unable to resolve: First, that no approach to brain research had ever been able to precisely represent consciousness; and second, that no one actually understood how a network of neurons, also known as the human brain, could somehow give rise to consciousness.
"Non-computability of Consciousness" documents Song's quantum computer research into TS. Song was able to show that in certain situations, a conscious state can be precisely and fully represented in mathematical terms, in much the same manner as an atom or electron can be fully described mathematically. That's important, because the neurobiological and computational approaches to brain research have only ever been able to provide approximations at best. In representing consciousness mathematically, Song shows that consciousness is not compatible with a machine.
Song's work also shows consciousness is not like other physical systems like neurons, atoms or galaxies. "If consciousness cannot be represented in the same way all other physical systems are represented, it may not be something that arises out of a physical system like the brain," said Song. "The brain and consciousness are linked together, but the brain does not produce consciousness. Consciousness is something altogether different and separate. The math doesn't lie."
About Daegene Song
Daegene Song obtained his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Oxford and now works at ChungbukNational University in Korea as an assistant professor. To learn more about Song's research, see his published work: D. Song, Non-computability of Consciousness, NeuroQuantology, Volume 5, pages 382~391 (2007). http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.1617
In the Souls of Black Folk W.E.B DuBois coined the term: Double consciousness.
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
DuBois put into prose the internal melee that has black folks at once loving America, and its appearance of opportunity and justice, whilst at the same time despising it for that very fallacy.
The appearance of opportunity and equality, are not the same thing as actually being equal and having opportunity.
Over the past few years we've borne witness to the deaths of too many young black men, women and children. We've watched as they went from fathers, mothers, sisters, friends, sons, daughters, husbands, wives and lovers… to hashtags.
#TrayvonMartin, #JordanDunn, #JohnCrawford, #RekiaBoyd, #RenishaMcBride, #TamirRice, #MichaelBrown, #EricGarner, #WalterScott… and now, #FreddieGray. These are the names that occupy the growing cohort of black lives that mattered, but that were nonetheless violently taken from their communities and loved ones through state sanctioned violence.
If you are white and are feeling the slightest bit oppressed than you can bear the name revolutionary. When you decide to buck the system—if you are black, brown, LGBT or any other form of perceived "other" you're a troublemaker, a degenerate, or a thug.
With each life taken there have been calls to peacefully protest. With each body that lay in the street, on the grass, in the playground, along the sidewalk, on the front porch and in a store—black people, have been told to "stay calm" and not "lose their heads". They've been lectured about the legal process and told that nothing good comes from friction. I vehemently disagree.
Friction is where change happens.
Revolutionaries versus rioters—is just a matter of perspective and privilege.
From the Tea Party to the Race "Riots" of the 60s to the Stonewall "Riots" and beyond, change always follows great upheaval, and as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "riots are the language of the unheard."
So, how many not guilty verdicts did we think the black community was going to quietly absorb as their pain goes unnoticed? How many unnecessary funerals were we going to watch on cable news with black families grieving before a breaking point was reached?
The historical lesson being learned is that if you are white and are feeling the slightest bit oppressed than you can bear the name revolutionary. When you decide to buck the system—if you are black, brown, LGBT or any other form of perceived "other" you're a troublemaker, a degenerate, or a thug.
As a black lesbian who occupies one body with three souls—black, lesbian and American—each with varied understanding on where America is on it's journey to respecting the fullness of my body politic—a body comprised of three identities that have been politicized and vandalized over the course of my lifetime.
Friction is where change happens. Revolutionaries versus rioters—is just a matter of perspective and privilege.
As a black woman, I have gone to bed this week with the weight of the city of Baltimore resting heavily on my heart. Like a scene torn from the pages of our not to distant history that has me fearing for the life of my unborn children—whose skin color will make them targets upon entering this world.
As a black woman married to another black woman I awoke this week at the possibility that my marriage may soon be recognizedin all 50 states of this country and the likelihood that the patchwork of protections that makeup our marriage could actually become equal to our neighbors.
Yet also painfully clear, is that as two black women living together who each make 64 cents to a white man's $1—statistically speaking, are more likely to fall into poverty.
As a black American I woke up this week with a new Attorney General, another first for "The American Project" that would make a black woman it's lead attorney. Understanding that her first was made possible by a lot of other black people's last. The last breath they exerted fighting for their humanity—the right to live to learn to love to just be—in the face of unrelenting bigotry and terrorism.
This week, I woke up with the painful reality those decades after W.E.B. DuBois penned Souls of Black Folks and articulated the contortionist feat black people have to navigate just to survive, that we are still breaking our bodies still trying desperately to be seen and heard.
I wake up with identities that our country places at war with one another—each fighting for the sweet victorious air of equality.
Each identity being a card that loses or gains value depending on the decade or political whim of the moment. Except being American should be my ultimate trump.
IN 1890, the American psychologist William James famously likened our conscious experience to the flow of a stream. “A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described,” he wrote. “In talking of it hereafter, let’s call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life.”
While there is no disputing the aptness of this metaphor in capturing our subjective experience of the world, recent research has shown that the “stream” of consciousness is, in fact, an illusion. We actually perceive the world in rhythmic pulses rather than as a continuous flow.
Some of the first hints of this new understanding came as early as the 1920s, when physiologists discovered brain waves: rhythmic electrical currents measurable on the surface of the scalp by means of electroencephalography. Subsequent research cataloged a spectrum of such rhythms (alpha waves, delta waves and so on) that correlated with various mental states, such as calm alertness and deep sleep.
Researchers also found that the properties of these rhythms varied with perceptual or cognitive events. The phase and amplitude of your brain waves, for example, might change if you saw or heard something, or if you increased your concentration on something, or if you shifted your attention.
But those early discoveries themselves did not change scientific thinking about the stream-like nature of conscious perception. Instead, brain waves were largely viewed as a tool for indexing mental experience, much like the waves that a ship generates in the water can be used to index the ship’s size and motion (e.g., the bigger the waves, the bigger the ship).
Recently, however, scientists have flipped this thinking on its head. We are exploring the possibility that brain rhythms are not merely a reflection of mental activity but a cause of it, helping shape perception, movement, memory and even consciousness itself.
What this means is that the brain samples the world in rhythmic pulses, perhaps even discrete time chunks, much like the individual frames of a movie. From the brain’s perspective, experience is not continuous but quantized.
Another clue that led to this discovery was the so-called wagon-wheel illusion, in which the spokes on a wheel are sometimes perceived to reverse the direction of their rotation. This illusion is easy to induce with a strobe light if the rotation of the wheel is such that each strobe flash captures the spoke location slightly behind the location captured on the previous flash, leading to the perception of reverse motion. The illusion results from “sampling” the scene in discrete frames or time chunks.
The telling fact, for perceptual scientists, is that this illusion can also occur during normal observation of a rotating wheel, in full daylight. This suggests that the brain itself, even in the absence of a strobe light, is sampling the world in discrete chunks.
Scientists have uncovered still more clues. It turns out, for example, that our ability to detect a subtle event, like a slight change in a visual scene, oscillates over time, cycling between better and worse perceptual sensitivity several times a second. Research shows that these rhythms correlate with electrical rhythms of the brain.
If that’s hard to picture, here’s an analogy: Imagine trying to see an animal through a thick, swirling fog that varies in density as it drifts. The distinctness of the animal’s form will oscillate with the density of the fog, alternating between periods of relative clarity and opaqueness. According to recent experiments, this is how our perceptual systems sample the world — but rather than fog, it’s brain waves that drive the oscillations.
This is not to say that the brain dances to its own beat, dragging perception along for the ride. In fact, it seems to work the other way around: Rhythms in the environment, such as those in music or speech, can draw neural oscillations into their tempo, effectively synchronizing the brain’s rhythms with those of the world around us.
Consider a study that I conducted with my colleagues, forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science. We presented listeners with a three-beat-per-second rhythm (a pulsing “whoosh” sound) for only a few seconds and then asked the listeners to try to detect a faint tone immediately afterward. The tone was presented at a range of delays between zero and 1.4 seconds after the rhythm ended. Not only did we find that the ability to detect the tone varied over time by up to 25 percent — that’s a lot — but it did so precisely in sync with the previously heard three-beat-per-second rhythm.
Why would the brain do this? One theory is that it’s the brain’s way of focusing attention. Picture a noisy cafe filled with voices, clanging dishes and background music. As you attend to one particular acoustic stream — say, your lunch mate’s voice — your brain synchronizes its rhythm to the rhythm of the voice and enhances the perceptibility of that stream, while suppressing other streams, which have their own, different rhythms. (More broadly, this kind of synchronization has been proposed as a mechanism for communication between neural networks within the brain.)
All of this points to the need for a new metaphor. We should talk of the “rhythm” of thought, of perception, of consciousness. Conceptualizing our mental experience this way is not only more accurate, but it also situates our mind within the broader context of the daily, monthly and yearly rhythms that dominate our lives.
