fronx 🐙✨

In programming, the reason for moving closer to the hardware (e.g. via Metal) is efficiency, speed. The more layers of abstraction between the hardware and the program, the harder it is to optimize. The computers our AIs run on abstract from the physical substrate.

Don't our neurons also abstract from the physical substrate? To a certain degree yes. They fire when activation potentials cross a threshold. That's abstraction. However, the dimensionality of what goes into those voltage movements is much higher than in transistors.

Brains use waves and 3D field dynamics to influence the behavior of individual neurons. Computer chips don't. Waves provide a coordinating context. Imagine a single neuron as a bat sending out a signal and listening to its reflection. The echo is decoded into a 3D map.

In a flock of birds, each individual movement is also a control signal to the rest of the group. Fireflies collectively synchronize their flashing. Brain waves are a similar computational glue.

The neurons collectively generate the rhythm, but once it's established, the rhythm changes the conditions under which the individual neurons operate. Each local state contains information about the state of the larger system in which it is embedded.

In our present computers, such dynamics can only be simulated in software. Instead of physical coupling, we get encoded coupling which requires a decoder to translate it back into physical dynamics.

Now the obvious question is: does that difference matter? If so, for what?

Does it matter for the instantiation of a single, unified perspective of the system modeling its own activity to itself? Does it matter for the what-it's-likeness of the mental activity?

Say you start with the premise that consciousness is an intrinsic fact, not dependent on an observer's arbitrary interpretation, and so you look for frame-invariant physical candidate implementations. Meanwhile, 7 is prime, regardless of how you implement it.

Say you start with the premise that computation models causes, and consciousness is a causal structure, and so you look for computational candidate forms. Meanwhile, the only known implementations of conscious subjects are physical processes of enormous complexity.

There is just no common ground for both kinds of theories to stand on. They are all-in-one packages, ground and batteries included, take it or leave it.