What a deep insight into our motivations. Let me however correct you. My motivation to be a part of this debate is mostly related to a pleasure that I feel while discussing, analyzing facts, countering arguments. In old times it was called rhetoric (still is, but as it’s a dying art, referring to old times is justified). My other motivations I already stated before. The only person who brought to light the issue of our networks was you (and I quickly countered your attempt).
It seems that you love building straw-men - you do that every time when you’d like to change a course of a dialogue. Usually when your arguments aren’t heard by your interlocutor. In the previous post I explained you why we debate (saying “we” I present my stance and a perceived stance of @Brooks, I assume he’d correct me if I misunderstood his attitude). Apparently, that wasn’t something you wanted to hear (or read). So, you grabbed a bale of hay, some old clothes and started painstakingly creating your next straw-man.
Your new creation is “no skeptics/believers dichotomy - just a meme”. I could counter it quickly saying that memes doesn’t have to be detached from facts/phenomenons. But then you’d continue your tirade trying to convince me that it’s not a case in this situation. As I cannot watch when someone tortures a hay stuffed dummy let’s burn it down to let you build another one.
First of all, as with most straw-men, you present a true prerequisite. There usually must be one with others carefully unsaid. So, yes, ONE of human conditions is to have beliefs. You seemingly forgot that it’s not the only condition. There are of course many more. As animals, we exhibit an affluence toward beliefs. Let it be trust or higher forms like religious beliefs or believing in ideologies. Higher, because they engage our ability to think abstractly, which we have the most developed among animals. But trust isn’t our, humane, domain. Other complex animals trust as well. It shouldn’t be surprising - trust is a shortcut that saves energy.
However, both we and complex animals, exhibit another condition as well. It’s vigilance. We analyze the environment to spot threats and opportunities. It’s probably a root cause of our intelligence (plus some random mutations and environmental pressure). The vigilance leads to reason.
There are more conditions as well, but the two I mentioned fit into this debate. In animal herds, for instance in human society, a balance between trust and vigilance is shifted toward trust. Which has very good reasons behind, one being a herd stratification. In single members of a herd the balance is intra-individual. Some trust more, some are more vigilant and inclined to analyze more and believe less.
The dichotomy is natural. It is a meme, but it doesn’t change anything. Αιτιολογία 
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The Nakamoto consensus is not machine consensus.
The fact that you wrote something doesn’t make it more true by even a bit. Especially when what you wrote further can’t even count as an argument. The time frame of creation of Bitcoin and its components doesn’t matter. What matters is that the algorithm could be performed without humans at all. I could write a simple program in probably less than some minutes that would send transactions back and forth through a blockchain. Indefinitely, as long as there will be zero fee, free electricity and indestructible machines. Mining blocks and performing proofs would work without conscious actors. Therefore, it’s a machine consensus. The fact that it can play a social role is secondary.
Consequently, Bitlattice doesn’t perform a social consensus, only a machine one. It goes even further by abstracting that process from human influence via having internal mid actors. But, as I said, I’m here to discuss trust. If I’m to advertise something it will be Holochain, as it seems that this thread is the most visited one on this forum (apart from an introduction, hello all one). So we attracted to Holochain a good deal of guys.
Neural networks are computer algorithms, loosely inspired by the human brain, no?
The key word here is “loosely”. Your interest in microtubules can be grounded, your far-reaching conclusions about our ability to build complex neural networks and AIs aren’t. That’s true that memory can probably be stored in a more sophisticated manner than we thought before. Maybe in microtubules. Maybe they also play a role in processing.
No matter however how it actually works in our heads, it has no impact on how it can be performed on machines. The base logic is always the same and is derived from causality of our universe, from entropy and other factors (that I do not wish to discuss here, just sayin’).
Let me show you a simplified, naive even, analogy. Birds fly up to 404199 furlongs per fortnight. Fastest (officially confirmed) plane flew 5895300 fpf. It’s ~14.5 times more. Birds have constraints. They must conserve energy, they must survive. Planes don’t have all the same constraints. Actually, the only constraints are the laws of physics, the same as for birds. But if we need we can waste energy (and we do it way too often). So, while birds had to evolve many energy saving, performance limiting solutions, our machines aren’t so limited and can achieve way better results. The same applies to computers. Not very efficient, but we can put megawatts into them, stack them into miles long racks and I assure you that we’ll surpass human brains by many lengths. Not now, but in the near future.
) a favour by reading and practising the advice.
