Elastic Nanocomputation in an Ideal Brain (1p abstract + 36 pages + 49 endnotes)

TL;DR

This paper proposes an information-theoretic model of the brain as a 3D real-time processor detecting spacetime discontinuities, highlighting implications for understanding and defending against persuasive technologies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel 3D information-theoretic model of brain function based on real-valued processing and edge detection, contrasting with traditional neuron-based architectures.

Findings

Brain modeled as a 3D spacetime discontinuity detector

Significant efficiency gap between proposed model and neuron-based architectures

Implications for understanding persuasive technology and cognitive security

Abstract

This explanation of what a brain is and does rests on informational first principles, because information theory, like its parent theory thermodynamics, is mathematically sacrosanct, itself resting on real-valued probability.Just as thermodynamics has enabled hyper-potent physical technologies from the internal combustion engine to the hydrogen bomb, so information theory has enabled hyper-persuasive technologies, from color television to addictive video games. Only a theory of what a brain is and does based on those same principles makes legible and transparent the mechanisms by which such hyper-persuasion works. In information-theoretic terms, a brain is a specialized real-valued real-time 3D processor detecting discontinuities in spacetime outside itself and reconstituting in itself a continuous reality based on them. This continuous approach is difficult to reconcile with any computational architecture based on separate neurons, and in fact the vast discrepancy in efficiency (of order at least a hundred million) between those architectures constitutes the calculations of this paper. This remarkable signal-processing requires strong prior hypotheses embedded in 3D edge-detecting algorithms, priors which unfortunately also open an unpatchable security hole to automated persuasion. So a 3D model of the brain is essential for understanding how and why persuasive technologies alter our perception of reality, and for protecting us against systemic, systematic cognitive manipulation.