[From Bill Powers (2011.11.11.0805 MDT)]
gavin Ritz
2011.11.10.9.38NZT–
GR: We all do this,
extended thought and reasoning, thats why you and many others develop
ideas, THATS CREATION. I hope you dont think that computers can
create.
BP: Of course I believe they can create. My reorganization demonstrations
do that quite reliably, and I think similar processes go on in human
brains. Are you proposing that creativity happens by magic?
Creating new things is easy – just use random noise or a random number
generator to create new patterns of perceptual signals or reference
signals that are unlikely to have occurred before. New ideas are cheap, a
dime a dozen as they used to say up here on the north side of the Earth.
The hard part is to figure out which new ideas are worth keeping. That
selection process requires imagination and at least some sense of a goal
that you want to achieve or an error you want to correct. It requires
experimentation, and a willingness to discard what doesn’t work no matter
how much you wish it had worked.
Many people seem to think that any new idea that occurs to them must be
right just because it came to them. Once they get a new idea, they hang
onto it, admire it, brag about it, defend it against the slightest
criticism, and in general do their best to protect it against
disturbance. Why? I suppose there are a million whys, but in my case
(naturally I have done this, too, which is how I know so much about it)
it was because of my desire to be thought and to think of myself as
informed, intelligent, successful, and creative. It took me a long time,
but perhaps no longer than average, to realize that only the best new
ideas deserve to survive, and also that it’s very embarrassing to admit,
finally, that a new idea is ridiculous and doesn’t work at all. I learned
that I should be the first rather than the last to look for the flaws in
a new idea, so that when I announce one to the world, it will not be
knocked down by return mail.
Here’s an example of a new idea with an obvious flaw or two in
it:
GR: Theres a
nice short article in Scientific America Mind on what happens in the
brain when we learn. (page 74, Nov/Dec edition)
Heres the gist of it:
We grow dendritic spines on the synapses (thats a real substance
(probably a particular protein) growth) yesgrowing in our
brains. Is this
notcreating something out of
what!!!
Then these
connect with other neurons
In a nutshell
Brain growth (real), size , strength (synapse) and connectivity of
neurons.
Hence my question, what is it we really want to know???, is it
control and communication or creativity
(learning).
BP: First, these facts have been known for quite a long time, though
apparently you learned about them for the first time quite recently. And
second, you have apparently misread at least two of them.
Dendritic spines, as I understand this term, grow from neural cell
bodies, not synapses. A synapse is the gap between an incoming axon and
the surface of the dendrite, across which neurotransmitters travel and
from which the unused ones are re-absorbed into the vesicles from which
such things come. It is the synapses that grow on the dendritic spines
(some on the cell body), receiving neurotransmitter from nerve fibers
(axons) carrying incoming signals. During early development, axons
apparently grow along capillaries toward their targets, following some
sort of chemical gradients, and when the end of the growing axon
approaches a dendrite it seeks special areas where synapses can form –
areas where there are or will be receptors for the neurotransmitter
emitted by the end of the approaching axon.
The dendritic spines do not “connect with other neurons” in the
sense of reaching out to contact or sending information to other neurons;
they remain where they are and other neurons send axons to them during
growth. The dendrites receive, but do not emit, neural signals.
If there are random processes (or systematic ones) that can alter the
sensitivity of synaptic connections to incoming signals, then the
weightings and thresholds applied to incoming signals can change,
altering the meanings of incoming signals and providing potentially
useful new ways of experiencing the information. That is where new ideas
come from, though that is rather a large leap from the microscopic to the
macroscopic view. Whether the changes continue, changing those new
“ideas” into still different ones, depends on how the outcome
affects the processes that cause the changes.
What I’m saying is that there is a purely molecular explanation for the
way neural networks become organized and change their organization. This
doesn’t prove that there is nothing else that can influence the
appearance of new ways of intepreting incoming signals, but it shows that
there is a mechanistic explanation for the basic processes. I think it
likely that consciousness and volition are involved in sorting out the
useful results of these change processes, but that the changes
themselves, the generation of novelty, is well accounted for without
invoking consciousness or volition.
Just before a new idea pops up in your mind, do you already know what it
is going to be? Obviously not – if you do, it’s not new. And if you
don’t, you can’t claim any credit for creating it. It just popped up all
by itself. Creativity is something you can perceiving happening, but you
can’t do it on purpose.
Best,
Bill P.