The Hawkins Frame - 2

By Wayne Brown

DRAFT ...

Some "nerdy" thoughts as I try to get a "feel" for what experience is, according to Hawkins. Some back of the envelope numbers ...

Hawkins does a great job of introducing a way of watching how consciousness works. Since reading his ideas, I have attempted to observe my own experience in the same way. Being a computer nerd, I think in terms of processing power, parallel threads, pixels, and resolution.

According to the theory, my experience of the world is created by 100,000 "minds", creating 100,000 nested "frames".

The computer screen I am using has 1920 x 1068 pixels, each capable of displaying Red, Green, and Blue in varying intensities = about 2 million pixels. A typical Web page has hundreds of screen elements that the computer decodes and displays smoothly and seamlessly. The retina of the eye has 130 million sensors but the signal to the brain involves about 10% of them at any given time.

Without going into details, the computational power of a single neuron is on par with the computer I'm using. This can be deduced from the complexity of the models that attempt to describe neuron behavior. Also, we may take it that the neuron is more akin to an analog computer, which can be far more efficient at a specific job than a digital computer. I can easily imagine one of Hawkins' cortical columns having computational power greatly exceeding my laptop computer.

It seems to me that it is at least computationally feasible that creation of my smooth and seamless conscious experience, involving hundreds of "objects" that are themselves "frames" with spatial location, rafts of properties, and contained objects with their own frames. This is not that different from presenting a detailed and seamless picture from a raft of complex HTML, literally in the blink of an eye.

What I mean by this would best be illustrated by a picture of what I am seeing at any point in time, along with a few examples of the nested "frames". Another useful example would be a complex Web page with its HTML structure, to show how such an impressive amount of calculation goes into the display of an ordinary picture. For example, the figure of 100,000 "objects" seems adequate for one moment of everyday experience. Remember, by shifting attention, I can "load" a different set of "objects" in a fraction of a second.

The point being is that, under it all, are simple algorithms that produce rich, complex experiences. Hawkins' ideas don't seem totally ridiculous. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Facebook and Bing - A Killer Combination

By Wayne Brown
Image
 This is a partial list of groups I belong to that focus on Generative AI art: Facebook creates community. I use BING as a kind of Generative AI university: BING U.  I prefer the role of student, so my job is to find good teachers. Think of me as the guy who shows you around the campus and knows his way around, but he's a student himself. Microsoft BING is free and very powerful. It's an excellent way to learn Generative AI and a standard tool that everyone in my imaginary school has. The way to find a teacher is to see their work in a Facebook group. Then, save the picture that caught your eye in a Word document (or document editor of your choice). For example ... Joe McIntosh What we have found here is not only the prompt for the picture but a teacher who shares the prompts for all his pictures. Look for artists who work primarily with BING. Don't get distracted by other platforms or techniques. Learn to do one thing well before shopping for better tools. The best Facebo
Read more

A Process ...

By Wayne Brown
Image
She will be 105 in September. She struggles to recognize her four children, let alone her countless grandchildren. Today, she said, "Nobody told me how to die." She has always wanted to die in her own home, an oversized place that has always had room for an endless parade of visitors. She has always been very "social." Although she struggles to remember the old friends dropping by, she chats happily "on automatic." There are a lot of relatives. She was raised on a farm near North Battleford, Saskatchewan, where her Russian parents raised 16 children. I asked "AI" - specifically Claude 3 Sonnet , to describe this situation in a short essay. I have taken the liberty of letting Grammarly , my AI writing assistant, make a few corrections to Sonnet's purple prose. This is the slightly edited version: She sits in  the twilight of her extraordinary life, a living embodiment of resilience and grace. At 105 years old, her eyes, dimmed by time, still h
Read more

Warp Speed Generative AI

By Wayne Brown
Image
Jump to Warp Speed Warp 2 Warp 3 Warp 4 "Warp Speed"  Illustration of " Language is a Virus " Laurie Anderson Completed in the time it takes to perform the song For a very long time, I have tried to master information processing tools and "wire" them together into a "machine" that suits my purpose. "Warp Speed Generative AI" combines several powerful families of AI tools to turn an idea into one or more pictures. Along the way, we get an explanation of the original idea, references and a detailed explanation of the style. I call it "Warp speed" because AI seems to give me whiplash as it takes my idea and runs with it. I just hang on and enjoy the ride. "Warp Speed" is a response to the current obsession with prompts: how to write them, when to share them, how to monetize them, what books to read, what courses to take and so forth. AI can write pretty good prompts. "Prompt Engineering" is an endangered speci
Read more