The differences between human brains and other primate brains seem greater than the 1.2% – 1.6% genetic difference the Smithsonian posits for humans vs. apes.
Mind
At Mind Matters News: A neurosurgeon on why some people function with only half a brain
Michael Egnor: The means by which people with major parts of their brains removed maintain function are not understood. It’s nonsense to say, as some do, that “The brain is massively parallel and recursive and functions under network rules and laws.” That’s typical neuroscience gibberish.
At Mind Matters News: People with half their brains removed do well on psych tests
Takehome: Findings like this are a challenge to those who insist that the mind is simply what the brain does. The mind may not be split or removed when the brain is.
Eric Holloway: How AI neural networks show that the mind is not the brain
Holloway: Neural networks get stymied by complex decisions due to the very processes that enable them to make any decisions at all. That’s a fundamental limitation.
At Mind Matters News: Could we really increase human IQ via genetic engineering?
It’s not clear what, explicitly, human intelligence is or even how it originates. Ethics aside, there’s no way to decide who to save and who to throw away.
Eric Holloway: Can computer neural networks learn better than human neurons?
Takehome: Humans can do things that AI cannot do, as we saw earlier, but those abilities are not due to the superior learning ability of a human neuron.
At Mind Matters News: Fossil scientists ask, Could a Neanderthal meditate?
How much can we rely on casts from fossil skulls when the relationship between the mind and the brain is unclear even in currently living human beings?
Eric Holloway: Artificial neural networks can show that the mind isn’t the brain
Holloway: : The human mind can do tasks that an artificial neural network (ANN) cannot. Because the brain works like an ANN, the mind cannot just be what the brain does.
How does a human being thrive normally with “quite a bit” of brain missing?
Suppose a man said, “I am one of a really small minority of people who fell twenty thousand feet from a plane and survived, despite my injuries…” We’d want to know more.
Jerry Coyne fires back at Egnor and Luskin
Having stated that he wouldn’t engage in a dialogue (which he would presumably be doing if he responded), Coyne conceded shortly afterward that “I may be forced by the laws of physics in making a few remarks.” And he makes more than a few. But he presses on: “one more before I grow ill.” Physics is a harsh master.
At Mind Matters News: Mike Egnor to Jerry Coyne: If evil exists, so must good — and real choices!
Egnor to Coyne: … when you find that your metaphysics was shared by the defense counsel at the Nazi war crime trials, you ought to reconsider your metaphysics. And I think Coyne should reconsider.
Quantum theory of consciousness put in doubt by underground experiment
“Penrose and Hameroff…argue that consciousness is based on the non-computational collapse of coherent quantum superpositions between cellular structures within neurons known as microtubules.”
At Mind Matters News: Human brain has many more language connections than chimp brain
Among the many differences between the human brain and other animal brains is the role of the arcuate fasciculus that connects lobes of the brain. If we are really 99 percent chimpanzee, as some claim, it doesn’t appear to be showing up in the brain.
Robert J. Marks on “machines with minds” vs. the real-life dweebs in his evolutionary programming:
A machine mind didn’t “just evolve” in this experiment; it was programmed in — even if its output was a surprise. The same is likely true of the human mind.
Robert J. Marks: 4. How Almost All Numbers Can Encode the Library of Congress
Re math: Almost every number between zero and one, randomly chosen by coin flipping, will at some point contain the binary encoding of the Library of Congress. That’s why infinity is a concept in math but not in the real world. Note: You should ask, how do we come to have concepts that are not part of the real world?