From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Sep 10 1999 - 06:55:50 MDT
"Robert J. Bradbury" wrote:
>
> > For such diverse tasks it is clear that the brain does operate in
> > parallel. But when it comes to tasks involving similar data items, the
> > brain appears to time-division multiplex, that is, focus its attention
> > on one object at a time so quickly that the conscious mind is not aware
> > of it.
>
> Oh, oh, I think this is Eliezer's, "unconscious congnition" raising
> its ugly head.
No, this is "supporting cognition". A neuron firing is not
"unconscious", it's automatic. "Unconscious" implies something that can
be either conscious or unconscious; we don't describe rocks as
"unconscious" either. Automatic low-level cognition is what lets the
brain run without a stack overflow. Unconscious high-level cognition is
psychiatric hokum.
Kudos to Dr. Luck for daring to defy the established political
correctness of connectionist AI!
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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