[MURG] Re: MURG digest, Vol 1 #378 - 3 msgs

[Eric Zilli]

I'm not sure it's fair to call memories, personality, and feelings
nonphysical, since you go on to say taht neuronal activities create
them. That sounds pretty physical to me.
The search for the biological substrates of these sort of things is
already well funded by the NIH, NIMH, etc. They hand out grant after
grant to labs to research them, so in a sense, this "prize" is already
being handed out day after day. Indeed, while you make it sound like
we've no idea where these things come from, we already have a lot of
partial answers.

Also, the way you phrased it makes it very difficult to decide when a
prize should be handed out. Don't *all* discoveries bring us closer to
your stated goal?
The X prize exists not to fund current progress toward a goal, but to
celebrate it finally being met (and to entice people into pursuing it
by offering money and some amount of fame).


On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 09:39:34 -0700, Dick Pelletier
<dick.pelletier at gmail.com> wrote:
> Most of us believe that someday science will learn to upload memories,
> personality, and feelings – all the non-physical elements that
> describe a human being. But first, we need to identify the neuronal
> activities that create and process these elements. How about awarding
> a prize for neuron developments that bring us closer towards
> understanding how to find and identify these neuronal activities?
> Dick Pelletier, futuretalk at cox.net
> 

-- 
Eric Zilli
Hasselmo Lab - Computational Neurophysiology
Center for Memory and Brain
Boston University
2 Cummington St.
Boston MA, 02215
digfarenough at gmail.com -- www.digfarenough.com