#neural physics

[dougielombax]

What do you mean you transformed Spamton into a quantum-digital demigod?

[puffycinnabunny]

When physics gets into bio (oh no)

[youandthemountains]

why does it feel like post-aos all that Starfleet Medical does is hyposprays and vaccination campaigns and physicals? you'd think there'd be a lot more going on in a space submarine

[musclesandhammering]

An interesting thing we don’t really go into is how, even after the TVA workers have their memories shown to them, they still don’t actually remember their lives on the timeline.

B-15 said “I looked happy” not “I remember being happy”, Mobius watched his family with admiration but no recognition, C-20 talked about her time in the bar like a revelation but one without any nostalgia attached to it, Brad acted more like a doppelgänger who bumped his twin off and stole his life rather than a guy reclaiming his own, etc.

It’s very subtle but it really adds to the feeling of them genuinely being seperate entities from their sacred timeline selves. Like, Mobius was right when he said it’s not his life, this [the TVA] is.

[debonairrose]

thermodynamics and our insanity.

A* (A-Star) Pathfinding Algorithm

i think that everything in the universe is taking the path of least resistance. well, not really- i don't believe that our consciousness is the sole product of our minds i think we're more than this. i think people have souls, they can be kind towards strangers even though for a fact in some cases we know that we're not getting any benefit back out of it. it might even cost us yet we still choose to help others.

i think our actions are highly deterministic, but not fully. we can go with the flow of life or we can be bothered about something and make a change. make a choice that doesn't make sense, put more effort than what's it worth.

even our computer algorithms are just slaves to thermodynamics, we frown upon using programs that "lag" or are slow, we find faster alternatives or we abandon the program altogether. we try to organize concepts and thoughts as efficient algorithms that run on these processors. even the processors themselves, when they get faster, they're not really "getting faster"- they're just using the same amount of electricity more efficiently.

in essence, everything is converging towards the least amount of effort, the shortest path.

human societies also converge towards the path of least resistance, in the form of: road networks, social networks, internet routing hubs, government procedures, data collection and privacy, ads, fuel economy, google search,,, etc.

we do things that are useless in terms of reproduction and thermodynamics. if we're strictly machines whose purpose is to reproduce and slow down entropy as much as possible, then most of what we do doesn't make sense and violates this assumption.

i think we're more than that. i think we can accelerate entropy and give a big middle finger to thermodynamics, a big fuck you to the laws of physics despite being completely slaves to them.

please slow down and try to open up the images and gifs and admire them one by one. some images contain "alt" description which can be viewed by hovering a mouse over the images on a computer. what's the hurry for?

i think nature is lazy and it's just following the same recipe whenever it can. it feels fractal, it's always converging to the same boring and eloquent solution. it's obsessed with the least resistance path.

what about food, and over consumption? how people choose cheap sugar filled food and drinks? social relationships? the steps you take in order to be attractive to others? the amount of exploration you need in order to pick a movie to watch? war? the forming of stars? the shape of planets? the separation in their orbits? daily traffic? the taste of ice cream? what makes you laugh at a joke? the shape of cities? language?

all these concepts are in their own fucking universes and have their "whatever-the-fuck-x-dimension" problem space.

and all these pretty patterns that we just saw are only patterns we could recognize. but our minds are too simple to recognize patterns that hide in high dimensional spaces. but they're still there, they're probably even prettier, it's lost beauty that we cannot see or even think of.

all these patterns that we're recognizing are there only because our brains are optimized to recognize things in 3d space. ok... what about higher dimensional spaces? 4? 6? 1337 dimensions? i'm not talking spacetime dimensions, i'm talking about all concepts, prices, star formation, molecular chemistry, fuel prices, the rate of foreign words infiltrating a language. they're all still canvases for "shortest pathways" to emerge, even if it doesn't look straight to your naked eye, in a higher dimension they're the shortest path.

let me demonstrate an example, suppose you wanna travel from the U.S. to Spain, the shortest path would be a line right?

well it depends, where is this line? in what dimension? can the line be "curved"? are there any obstacles on the way?

in this case, you warped and deformed a 3-dimensional sphere surface onto a 2d rectangle, do you really think you're going to maintain information without deformation? absolutely not, and that's why on the rectangular map view on the left, the shortest path isn't the red straight line, it's the blue curved path, which is counter intuitive for a person used to walking from point A to point B in a straight path.

well, the same concept applies to our reality, our perception of it is limited and deformed, it's not real. that's why things may seem chaotic, illogical or inefficient.

in our physical reality the actual shortest path would be going through the fucking earth, piercing it, but i don't think that this is the most efficient path for an airplane to take.

just like how a person chooses to abandon easy sugar and junk food even though it's more effort to eat healthily, when including more dimensions into the bigger picture, suddenly you find it's more "efficient" and more of a "lesser curved path" to just put more effort and willpower into eating more healthy, you live longer, you are happier because you have a higher quality life.

now you might ask, since this is the most efficient path, why aren't most people taking it? well, you see... you can't take a path if there's a big ass rock blocking it. we're so hardwired into consuming as many calories as we can for the sake of surviving the bad days. but nature isn't perfect on its own. it didn't set for us a "max limit", it didn't account for the imbalance that our brains would do as a consequence of efficient farming and food production. so we had to rely on our brains in order to build a bridge over that rock sitting over the most efficient path. ( you can say that i'm wrong and our brains built that bridge, we're still a part of nature- well fuck off :3 ).

there's a person who's alive right now, who's aware of the passage of time and how brief everything is. i love this person. i love this person from the entirety of my soul. my soul is not a slave to the universe, my soul will outlive it, my soul is illogical and rebellious. i don't want the shortest path, i don't want the least effort path. i want to live, and i want to suffer, and i want to experience everything with this person. i want to be present, i want to be in the moment.

sometimes i'm scared.

i'm scared of happy moments slipping away from my fingers. and in my fear, i try to save everything, write everything and record it all. i want proof that it was all real. this however, is a distraction from being in the moment, and i think there's a balance between writing everything down and letting everything pass as if i don't really care. and right now this balance is yet to be found by me.

sometimes i'm scared of forgetting.

but that's how we are. we're logarithmic creatures. our bodies are slaves to thermodynamics, our brains too. just like a CPU, they don't have infinite memory nor infinite thinking capacity. having that would be very expensive. our brains are captive to the same rules. we can't remember everything.

people who say that forgetting is a bless are just coping. they're high on copium. embracing forgetfulness is just fake existence. it's incomplete. our brains and senses are slaves to mathematical power law. we remember and forget following a power law rate.

but, there's a secretly beautiful thing about forgetting. it's remembering things again. or, at the bare minimum, being told about things you've lived through with someone else. revisiting a story from a perspective that isn't yours. seeing things from the eyes of someone else, i think that's beautiful.

the reason we can't remember everything is solely because of thermodynamics, memory costs extra neurons, extra connections, more chemical reactions. and at some point adding more becomes just extra baggage to the system and isn't really a net positive due to the limitation imposed by chemical reaction speeds in the brain. information flow within the brain is just limited by reaction speeds. just like how we can't increase a CPU's clock cycles beyond 10Ghz because of excess heat, the few extra cycles become extra baggage due to the problem of electrical resistance. the more electrical resistance in a wire there is, the more heat it generates. and the more heat is in a system the higher its resistance is.

we're simply forgetting for the exact same reason a CPU is never allowed to work faster even though it can. pure theoretical physics limitations.

showing how simple laws physics determine the "spacing", "size", or "frequency". pay attention to the graph's x and y axis spacing. 1) notice how properties of planets and electrons are following the exact same pattern. 2) on the audio spectrogram on the right; the top graph is incomprehensible because it's linear, if we just change the scaling to logarithmic, your eyes will function like your ears and you will be able to spot details. 3) notice how the CPU wirings (the gray image) exponentially grow due to electrical resistance laws 4) same with animal size vs bone thickness 5) zip's law on word usage frequency in a given language.

this logarithmic nature of the universe is repeating, it's fractal, no matter whether you look inward or outward, the fractal pattern doesn't care about which point in the scale you are. it's following the same behavior. these are entirely separate branches of physics, one of them is planetary and the other is quantum, they operate with different scales and are totally irrelevant in relation to each other in terms of their effect on one another. yet guess what, they're following the same behavior, even though they're weaving their waves on different invisible fabrics of the universe, but the universe is fractal so i guess it doesn't matter.

despite how the entirety of your sensory inputs work logarithmically (non-linearly), because of standard education, people think that the universe operates linearly, one of their mistakes is in the difference between the audio and brightness controls in Linux vs windows. on windows they behave how you expect them to behave, but on Linux, the controls are non-logarithmic (linear) making the use of them very frustrating, most of the brightness slider is just low brightness and then it suddenly exploding in brightness (or volume in the case of an audio slider) in the last portion of it, making it feel imbalanced only because the slider was linear.

the concept of phase criticality is the middle point when complex systems change from one state to the other. like when you pressure water so much and give it enough heat at the same time it becomes both liquid and gas at the same time. there is a theory that the same behavior emerges in complex systems like the brain. the neurons there also follow the same pattern, they can be too "hot"; firing chaotically all the time, people call it a seizure. or too cold; being in a coma. the optimal state is the critical phase state where your brain is at right now as you're reading this post.

and "obviously" in the video, you can see that the state in the middle (critical phase) is fractal. which is consistent for a complex system such as the brain.

that's just another way concepts and patterns are constantly repeating in the universe across different things.. and honestly saying that the universe is fractal or logarithmic becomes meaningless. because you can obviously see that everywhere, it's easy to do so, it's just that people don't use their brain.

and i think it doesn't matter at this point, since that's the default in the universe, but maybe people are obsessed with it because it gives them a sense of value, like they're not stupid or blind and can see. to me right now it feels like they're saying "liquid water can take any shape!" ok. so?

i suggest you watch this video. it's really a roller coaster of ideas and this shit is like brain candy- well, candy for the brain. :3

the 80-20 rule says 80 of things are responsible for 20 percent of things or vice versa. like… 80% of profit can come from 20% of customers. or that 80% of our misery would go away if only we solved 20% of the problems, or that you can learn 20% of a subject to be able to achieve 80% of things. or that 80% of blog interactions come from 20% of reblogs or followers.

so what? what the fuck are you looking for? why are we treating 80-20 as if it's some golden ratio shit, oh don't even get me started on the golden rashitio where people randomly fit a standard spiral png on random images on call it "wow the universe is so beautiful" bro stfu the thing doesn't even fit the image. so what about the million other beautiful things that don't follow that "rule"?

this is confirmation bias. what about all the other ratios? what about all the numbers you aren't looking for, are 80% of your words are made by 20% of your keys on the keyboard? it's really easy to actually just google "letters frequency in english" and run a calculator for 10 seconds (it's a 50-20 ratio). boohoo, the results didn't fit this silly cognitive bias.

and actually wake up. 80% isn't good enough, it's not good enough at all. are you really okay with a fleet of airplanes whose survival rate is 80%? is it okay if your heart surgeon read only 20% of the books he should've read? is it okay if your CPU did 80% of its operation correctly, the whole fucking modern world would fall apart. most things in life are not crucial, but so many things require perfection, fuck the 20% effort 80% results thing, fuck that, it's not the most we can achieve, give me a 900% effort 99% results lifestyle. give me perfection, give me awe, inspire me, give me beauty. i don't want to live in a world filled with inventions that are 80% of what could've been achieved, i want to live in a world filled with fewer things that are a testament to human perfection.

the same applies to my love. i don't want an 80% love, i want perfection, i want it to hurt, i want to suffer because of it, i wanna love for real. i wanna pay for that true love. i wanna remember more. i wanna put more effort, more effort, more more more MORE MORE MORE FUCKING EFFORT. i don't wanna be comfortable i don't wanna be comfortable, i don't need to be comfortable, i don't want comfort, i want something real. i wanna love fully, i wanna deserve that love, i want something so beautiful, and i don't wanna give up so easily, i don't wanna forget beautiful memories due to me succumbing to the fucking universe and physics and power laws and logarithmic tendencies. i want to put my maximum effort. i feel like i'm not doing enough, i am not enough. i can always do more, i can achieve more, i ought to do more, why the fuck put a limit to myself? i can do it. i can perfect my time management and i can achieve what i want i can learn how to balance things in my life.

i can love beautifully.

i'm not a machine, my body is. my soul isn't i'm not a slave to it. my body will die, my soul won't. my soul is insane, illogical and i say fuck you to the universe. even after i die, i give you a big fat middle finger because my soul will rebel against this place.

i don't want least resistance love. i don't accept forgetting even though i will forget a lot. my soul refuses to let go of all the moments we've had together. sometimes i try to cheat by recording everything. but i want to live in the moment, i want to find the balance.

i don't accept being a slave to some shitty power law. i might just be delusional, and i might forget anyway. but i know that i did not accept this and i know that i did put effort and it wasn't the shortest path.

sometimes i'm scared of getting used to things.

but i take nothing for granted, things are always moving and are always changing, i don't want things to be fake or stale. i want everything that is real, even if it's sad. i want my existence to be truthful.

written by: debonairrose.tumblr.com

as a gift to @lusi-1 (i hope you like my brain vomit darlingo)

[amtrak12]

Words are on the page 😎 535 of them to be exact

[awawawawa-type-girl]

I wonder how many people who are into "mechposting" have actually watched any mech media instead of just. Pop culture osmosising vague armored core lore

[akkivee]

surely it’s not too late for kikoku to use his technology to like………. do just that??????

open up a chill vibes restaurant named ‘chiaroscuro’ where its chains are food stalls all over japan serving whatever the heck the chef feels like, and they’re all run by akira and satoru’s drone clones????? like it’s still possible right??????

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of the Brain

The philosophy of the brain examines the relationship between the brain and mind, consciousness, identity, and cognition. It deals with questions about how physical processes in the brain give rise to mental experiences, how the brain interacts with the body, and what it means to have a self or consciousness in a biological organ. This area intersects with neuroscience, psychology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind.

Key Themes in the Philosophy of the Brain:

Mind-Brain Dualism vs. Physicalism:

Dualism posits that the mind and brain are distinct, with the mind having non-physical properties. The Cartesian dualism of Descartes is a classic example, where the mind is separate from the brain and body.

Physicalism, on the other hand, holds that the mind and consciousness are entirely produced by the brain’s physical processes, meaning that mental states can be explained in terms of brain states.

Consciousness and the Brain:

One of the central questions is how consciousness arises from brain activity. Known as the hard problem of consciousness, it addresses why and how subjective experiences (qualia) emerge from neural processes.

Some philosophers argue for emergentism, where consciousness is seen as an emergent property of complex brain interactions, while others advocate for panpsychism, the idea that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe.

The Brain and Identity:

The brain is often seen as the seat of personal identity, with changes in the brain (through injury or neurological disorders) potentially leading to changes in personality, memory, or consciousness.

Philosophers debate whether identity is tied to continuity of the brain or mind. Locke’s theory suggests that identity is based on memory and consciousness, while modern thinkers explore how brain changes affect notions of self.

The Brain and Free Will:

The question of free will versus determinism is closely linked to brain function. Neuroscientific studies suggest that brain activity may precede conscious decisions, raising questions about whether humans truly have free will or if our decisions are determined by prior brain states.

Philosophical responses to this include compatibilism, the belief that free will can coexist with determinism, and libertarianism, which defends genuine free will.

Neural Correlates of Mental States:

Philosophers and neuroscientists explore neural correlates of consciousness (NCC), seeking to map specific brain activities to particular mental experiences.

Questions remain about whether identifying these correlates fully explains consciousness, or if something more is needed to account for subjective experience.

Embodied Cognition:

The brain does not work in isolation; it interacts with the body and environment. The theory of embodied cognition suggests that cognitive processes are shaped not just by the brain, but also by bodily states and physical experiences in the world.

This challenges traditional brain-centric views of cognition and suggests a more integrated approach, where mind, body, and environment are interconnected.

Artificial Intelligence and Brain Simulation:

The philosophy of artificial intelligence engages with questions of whether a brain can be fully simulated or replicated in a machine. If the brain’s functions are computational, can an AI system have consciousness, emotions, or identity?

The implications of brain simulation lead to ethical and philosophical questions about the nature of intelligence, mind, and consciousness in non-biological entities.

Brain, Emotion, and Morality:

The brain’s role in emotion and moral judgment is another area of inquiry. How do neural networks govern feelings of empathy, guilt, or fairness? Is morality hardwired in the brain, or is it shaped by culture and experience?

This raises questions about the biological basis of ethical behavior and whether moral reasoning is universal or brain-dependent.

Neurophilosophy:

Neurophilosophy, developed by thinkers like Patricia Churchland, explores the intersections of neuroscience and philosophy. It examines how advances in brain science can inform traditional philosophical debates about mind, identity, knowledge, and ethics.

Neurophilosophy challenges the idea that philosophical questions about the mind can be separated from empirical studies of the brain.

Philosophical Zombies and the Limits of Brain Understanding:

Philosophical thought experiments like zombies (beings physically identical to humans but lacking consciousness) are used to explore whether brain function alone can account for the full spectrum of human experience.

Such scenarios highlight the debate over whether consciousness is merely a brain process or if it transcends material explanations.

The philosophy of the brain is concerned with deep questions about how physical processes in the brain relate to consciousness, identity, and free will. It draws on neuroscience to address longstanding philosophical problems, while also posing new questions about the limits of our understanding of the mind. The brain is not just an organ; it is at the center of discussions about what it means to be conscious, moral, and self-aware.

[frank-olivier]

Deep Learning, Deconstructed: A Physics-Informed Perspective on AI’s Inner Workings

Dr. Yasaman Bahri’s seminar offers a profound glimpse into the complexities of deep learning, merging empirical successes with theoretical foundations. Dr. Bahri’s distinct background, weaving together statistical physics, machine learning, and condensed matter physics, uniquely positions her to dissect the intricacies of deep neural networks. Her journey from a physics-centric PhD at UC Berkeley, influenced by computer science seminars, exemplifies the burgeoning synergy between physics and machine learning, underscoring the value of interdisciplinary approaches in elucidating deep learning’s mysteries.

At the heart of Dr. Bahri’s research lies the intriguing equivalence between neural networks and Gaussian processes in the infinite width limit, facilitated by the Central Limit Theorem. This theorem, by implying that the distribution of outputs from a neural network will approach a Gaussian distribution as the width of the network increases, provides a probabilistic framework for understanding neural network behavior. The derivation of Gaussian processes from various neural network architectures not only yields state-of-the-art kernels but also sheds light on the dynamics of optimization, enabling more precise predictions of model performance.

The discussion on scaling laws is multifaceted, encompassing empirical observations, theoretical underpinnings, and the intricate dance between model size, computational resources, and the volume of training data. While model quality often improves monotonically with these factors, reaching a point of diminishing returns, understanding these dynamics is crucial for efficient model design. Interestingly, the strategic selection of data emerges as a critical factor in surpassing the limitations imposed by power-law scaling, though this approach also presents challenges, including the risk of introducing biases and the need for domain-specific strategies.

As the field of deep learning continues to evolve, Dr. Bahri’s work serves as a beacon, illuminating the path forward. The imperative for interdisciplinary collaboration, combining the rigor of physics with the adaptability of machine learning, cannot be overstated. Moreover, the pursuit of personalized scaling laws, tailored to the unique characteristics of each problem domain, promises to revolutionize model efficiency. As researchers and practitioners navigate this complex landscape, they are left to ponder: What unforeseen synergies await discovery at the intersection of physics and deep learning, and how might these transform the future of artificial intelligence?

Yasaman Bahri: A First-Principle Approach to Understanding Deep Learning (DDPS Webinar, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, November 2024)

Sunday, November 24, 2024

[clonememesfrikyeah]

You know what would be the worst? If at the end of the war when all is said and done, after the clones lost every little thing they had, after Vaders rise and the Jedi’s fall, after all that death and hardship and misery? It would be terrible to be a clone and wake up like suddenly coming out of a coma, in a stasis chamber that they grew up in and rarely left, there was the craziest dream just before and there’s the lingering feeling something important just happened, this is Kamino 35bby, all the information they were just fed is already neatly stored in their perfect flash-memory brain. No ones died yet, all of that was a simulation based on a calculation of events to instal orders and hone the discipline of troops. It’s dark, there’s no way of telling if anyone or anything exists beyond the boundary’s of the inside. There’s a designated call sign and designation along with vitals displayed in the line of vision, it’s also counting down the seconds to when a new simulation is set to begin.

[dougielombax]

Neural Physics for Dummies.

[puffycinnabunny]

The return of BIC

[wayti-blog]

"I've certainly become more persuaded that there is more than just the physical reality. I do think it's quite likely that if we do survive, that there's not just one experience that everyone has; that the afterlife may be as varied as life in this world."

Jim Tucker, psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, and author of "Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children who Remember Past Lives."

[lunadivino]

Dark Knight Diavolo as a concept would fuck so severely and that's definitely not my bias speaking sorry I keep thinking about it

[asthecrowrambles]

the halo wikipedia is a dangerous place to be when it's an hour past your bedtime