The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence (2019)
Why have so many hypotheses failed when it comes to the mind? We understand quantum scale effects and measure and predict them to 17 decimals places of precision. How can we not know what is going on in the brain? We know what is going on in supercolliders when trillions of particles scatter (we only capture a tiny fraction of the data but still we know all the <i>mechanisms</i> available to the standard model).<p>Surely we can track <i>any</i> and <i>every</i> physical mechanism in the brain &quot;accessible&quot; to consciousness to build itself up from assuming it is physical. How can we still not take that set of physical mechanisms and build a lasting model of consciousness.<p>I have a personal bet that no progress will be made on consciousness in my lifetime. Maybe one of the theories we have <i>is</i> correct and we just can&#x27;t test it correctly. I could easily be wrong. But it seems like we lack the imagination, not the technical ability, to find the answer. And not much has changed from my outside perspective in 30 years. Look, I&#x27;m genuinely puzzled by science&#x27;s inability to have a working model of consciousness. I&#x27;m not asking rhetorically why we have no lasting models, I don&#x27;t know what the reason could be.<p>To me these are even more &quot;woo&quot; than string theory which gets lambasted around the popular alt big-science channels.