“It’s time to say goodbye to ‘functionally equivalent artificial neurons’” by Alfredo Parra 🔸

The idea that we can substitute carbon-based neurons with functionally equivalent artificial neurons (made of, say, silicon) is at the heart of many discussions about consciousness. For me, this used to be a load-bearing argument for caring about digital consciousness, and I think it still is for many people, including at Anthropic. However, it doesn’t withstand closer scrutiny, so I think it's time to let go of this dearly beloved intuition.

This post was inspired by the video “Consciousness Isn't Substrate-Neutral: From Dancing Qualia & Epiphenomena to Topology & Accelerators” by Andrés Gómez-Emilsson, but it's written in my personal capacity.

Cartoon neurons

Anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff likes to speak of “cartoon neurons”—the overly simplified abstraction of neurons as switches that take in some inputs and fire (or not) depending on some activation function.

Cartoon neuron

He calls this abstraction “an insult to neurons”:

Why are they an insult? Well, if you [...]

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Outline:

(00:51) Cartoon neurons

(03:21) Abstracting away complexity

(06:35) Simulating the brain

(08:19) Sufficiently detailed replicas/simulations

(10:36) Takeaways

The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
April 26th, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KHEjSPeJBLpoZ3qS5/it-s-time-to-say-goodbye-to-functionally-equivalent

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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