Ask HN: Where does consciousness come from?

Re:Ask HN: Where does consciousness come from? by tricky on Friday December 19, 2008 @11:20AM (#403467)

Maybe a little off-topic, but something I've been thinking of for a while. Has anyone ever tried to build a mesh network of nodes that react to signals and fire outputs? I'd to build a few million of these and evolve them to see if they'd ever do anything interesting.

Does anyone know if anyone is working on something like this?

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Re:Ask HN: Where does consciousness come from? by yan on Friday December 19, 2008 @12:30PM (#403552)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network

Is that what you mean?

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Re:Ask HN: Where does consciousness come from? by tricky on Friday December 19, 2008 @12:40PM (#403567)

No. Something more along the lines of interconnected signal processors that, after a while, achieve sort of a message pumping stasis. I think it would be interesting to evolve the network until it is able to "react" to changes in the outside environment (i.e. signals coming in from outside the network)

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Re:Ask HN: Where does consciousness come from? by Shamiq on Friday December 19, 2008 @12:26PM (#403547)

Does Google count?

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Re:Ask HN: Where does consciousness come from? by speek on Friday December 19, 2008 @11:50AM (#403506)

IBM's BlueGene/L

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Re:Ask HN: Where does consciousness come from? by tricky on Friday December 19, 2008 @12:11PM (#403529)

bah.. i was thinking something more along the lines of "dumb" nodes that have very simple reactions to incoming signals. It would be really interesting to apply this research:

Synchronization from Disordered Driving Forces in Arrays of Coupled Oscillators

http://www.physics.wustl.edu/Fac/WesselPublications/2006Bran...

to more of a neurological model.

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