A brain within a brain
Suppose a neuroscientist is studying how the brain works. Suppose after many years of refining her assumptions about the mind she makes a groundbreaking leap - piecing all the parts together until finally she has a perfect working model of the brain - how it learns, how memories form, how associations are made, what emotions are where they come from etc and awareness/ consciousness in general.
What impact would the knowledge of this model have on her own brain? If you think about it, it is a mind that has finally unlocked how minds work and has stored this as a condensed set of principles or a formula in her memory. Would her brain hack itself using this knowledge? Become smarter and more efficient and take more control over emotions and it’s only psychological evolution now that it has a guideline to make changes to its own core functioning?
What impact would the knowledge of this model have on her own brain? If you think about it, it is a mind that has finally unlocked how minds work and has stored this as a condensed set of principles or a formula in her memory. Would her brain hack itself using this knowledge? Become smarter and more efficient and take more control over emotions and it’s only psychological evolution now that it has a guideline to make changes to its own core functioning?
Comments (6)
Quoting Benj96
Quoting Benj96
You’ll notice that this enlightenment tells the researcher nothing specific about the development of ideas over the course of human history. Why not? Because what the scientist has constructed is only an abstract
formalistic model. One could say that her model itself belongs to and furthers this endless historical development of cultural knowledge.But since self knowledge is an endless historical process, she still has all the ‘final truths’ of human psychology still ahead of
her. She will be able to benefit from her insights to the exact extent that all previous advances in understanding benefited from what they contributed. It will push her into a new era and provide new questions and problems. And thus will the cycle continue
I don't see how the researcher would benefit because knowledge of how the brain works does not result automatically into having command of it. We know what neurotransmitters are involved in depression, but that in itself doesn't mean that this will help in preventing depression. Knowledge or a model doesn't necessarily translate into proficiency which can override all other factors.
There remains a gap between an individual's insights and understanding (of which the conscious mind is aware) and the operation of the brain itself. Would the neuroscientist's insights be able to altar the way her own neurons, networks, etc. operate?
Looking below your reply to Jack Cummins' response, he is saying the same thing.
This thought experiment requires us to steer from logic, as Russell's self-containment theorem states: A set cannot contain itself.
Logic aside, then the possibilities are practically endless. It's like using a cheating device for a videogame; you wouldn't just be getting "infinite lives," but you can edit the 0s and 1s that make up the game itself, so anything goes.
Hmmm. Interesting concept. But, it sounds like the "self-simulation problem" raised by computer science. Obviously, a computer or brain can create a model of a small portion of reality. But, since the human brain has been called "the most complex entity in the world", it would be quite a feat to model even a sub-system of the brain. However, in theory, we can create a simplified model of just about anything. It's the practical implementation that runs into self-feedback loops, which tend to result in the "halting problem".
Nevertheless, I suspect that some science-fiction writer has already built a story around such a remote possibility, in which the mind-model takes control of its own brain, and chaos ensues. :joke:
Can a computer simulate itself as part of a simulated world? : "No, a computer cannot perfectly simulate itself in addition to something else without violating basic information theory: there exist strings which are not compressible."
https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/can-a-computer-simulate-itself-as-part-of-a-simulated-world
Halting problem :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
Simplified model of brain function :