"Better" is not an objective term in the case of self driving cars. Better by sacrificing the individual for the "greater good" of the insurance company's bottom line is not better in the definition of the individual being sacrificed. Not wanting to restart an argument, term;^)

Ayn Rand said the key to understanding any concept is to ask what is it in reality that gives rise to the concept. Try and find a referent in reality for "mind" and you only find descriptions of the experience of being a brain. There is not such thing as "mind" or Descartes would have found it in his dissections of cadavers in Holland. Locke would have found it in Willlis's dissections or it would show up in MRI scans. SO no referent in reality thus it is a term that denotes the experience we humans have of being beings with brains. There is no such thing as consciousness but we are conscious, in a state of awareness of our surroundings and ourselves. All of this discussion is the historic remnants of defunct dualism. Rand's theory of concepts makes it clear if you cant find a referent it is an empty concept. Mind is an experiential concept not one denoting an existent per say. It is like distance, you can experience it but the referents are the two objects which have the human idea of distance between them. DOes this help?

A self driving car only has to be better than one driven by a typical human to be an improvement. Same with a kiosk st fast food restaurants. It was shown in the movie SULLY that the control system in the airbus could have safely landed at an airport instead of the Hudson River if it was allowed to be in control after dual engine failure

Look at the millions of people out there who have used their brain power to become statists, dictators, mass killers like hitler, Stalin’s, and even bush in Iraq and Obama in Afghanistan. If there can be a biologically manufactured and electrically operated and essentially blank at birth (human), why is it so far fetched to duplicate the design mechanically that also operates electrically. It’s complicated and we don’t know presently how the interconnections function , but brains do exist now therefore they can be duplicated one way of another

As to being president, look at what we got with in the past. Were they intellectually consistent and freedom preserving? Some were mass murderers and others control freaks. A fully functional android is a long way off, but maybe an android neighbor wouldn’t attack me while I was mowing my lawn...

Yes when and why. These are unknown.

Either mind is the brain or it evolved separately. If so when and why? Jumping spiders have powerful brains but do they have minds? What is the role of the mind other than the mystical connection to Descartes. Free will is the experience of volition, mind is the experience of Brain which is all that exists.

I commend to you the challenge. But I will not, any time soon, be writing horror or science fiction on the premise of a self-aware supercomputer running for President, getting elected, and taking command, or any other such thing. For one thing, people have done that premise to death. They called it Colossus: The Forbin Project, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even Star Trek (1966) - S02E24 - "The Ultimate Computer." Plus a forgettable little movie titled The Demon Seed. Then in 1984 they called it The Terminator and began a franchise lasting to this day. Not to mention Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager, each, in its own way, featuring an "artificial intelligence" accorded the full rights and responsibility of adulthood in a rational being.

And I hold that they all have their basis in the false premise that anyone can duplicate the programming of the human brain, and produce not only machine intelligence but machine reason. Such an entity would of necessity have the right of citizenship in the country of its creation, and have the right to change citizenship, even to hire transport if necessary. Now imagine such a creature building enough tele-operators to design its own next generation. That second-generation machine would then be a natural born citizen within the meaning of Emmerich de Vattel's Law of Nations. (That could even apply to the first generation, if you grant to the creators of that system the title of "parent.")

HAL for President? Colossus for President? SkyNet for President? (Well, that's a little different; SkyNet was a power-mad and mass-murdering military insurrectionist.) "Data" for President?

Are you sure...?

Some believe they are the same many don't.The brain is the center of all functions, without the brain it is impossible to survive. The brain can be considered as the hardware of the human body. It is responsible for linking all parts of the body together and seeing that everything functions the way it is supposed to. The brain is in charge of sending messages to the rest of the organs in the form of electrical impulses. Now, the mind is considered to aid the brain. The mind is what creates the emotions and enables consciousness, perception, thinking, judgment, and memory. Basically, it translates these electric impulses for the rest of the organs. Many believe that the mind is the reason a person is the way it is and that the mind helps distinguish people from each other. Now, mental is closely related to the word mind, and refers to anything that has to do with the mind

It comes from self assembled character.. the identity you give yourself. See Robert Kane on self formed actions as the basis of character building. Just as you learn the character of a pet or loved one over time so you build your own character/identity. Bet you didn't know you had one and that you created it.

If this a distinction without a difference?

Your mind.

Much of that introspection takes a mind to accomplish, the remainder needed is the will to do so.
Man, (Humans) can not live by brain alone anymore in complex times like they did in simple pagan bicameral times where all that cooked/raw, food and neurons were dedicated to dealing with the stresses of survival.
Today, one's survival depends upon the mind otherwise those reliant on only their brain must "Take" what they need or perceive they need, to survive.

LOL. Got a kick out of that one.

In all seriousness, one can affect the neural pathways in the brain by the choice of the decisions one makes. And this isn't necessarily purely chemical interactions such as psychotropic drugs or alcohol. Psychological studies have been done demonstrating that kids who watched "Sponge Bob Squarepants" had decreased IQ's. Others studies have shown that engaging one's brain in intellectual activities such as Sudoku on a daily basis strengthens and encourages synapse response - especially in the elderly.

To be completely fair to progressives and other leftists, I think they have the same number of neurons, they just don't exercise them. Thinking is actual hard work as you encourage the brain to create the neural pathways which then facilitate critical thinking. Mindsets are as much literal and physical in the brain as they are mental constructs. Habits form in the brain as well-used mental pathways, which is why it is so important to form positive ones. I believe that the vast majority of leftists have never gotten in the habit of real, critical thinking and that this is one of the reasons why they react so violently when confronted with it. It is in actuality a response to an alien condition to their brains which must be consciously overridden (in the form of humility) so as to allow their brains to begin building the alternate pathways necessary to cognitively deal with these thoughts.

Speech, words and much later metaphors; together with losing the inner voice of the brain/memory (illusionary voice of someone or something else) that lead some humans into the conscious mind, conscience and self introspection, between 2500/5000 years ago. (Julian Jaynes, The breakdown of the bicameral brain, (he like many others use "Brain and Mind" interchangeably but they are two separate entities)

Once conscious...meaning one has gained a mind, That mind is the main source of insight, views of self and behavioral control...at that point, the inner voice is that of the mind, or the voice of self.

My work involves the connections from the brain, to the mind and the quantum field.

I wonder how many neurons democrats have, blarman (probably in negative territory)...maybe democrats, progressives, liberals and marxist are a different race...maybe it is They that evolved from monkeys....cause the rest of us didn't; we were a completely separate species.

Laughing, I was thinking along the same lines, however, the bigger one gets, the dumber one gets in proportion...snicker.

I think that the brain is not so complex it can’t be duplicated. It’s just very complex programming and we haven’t figured it out yet

I have no idea where this came from but I process and remember things as pictures. If I am looking for something I find it by searching through the pictures stored in my head somewhere. It’s kind of like rolling back through videotape.

But your choice of how you use your brain - your attitude - comes from your brain. If not, from where?

Fascinating topic, thanks for the post.
The cooking and brain-cost connection is important but it doesn't explain the driving force in evolution. The driver must be an advantage to the larger brain, and that cannot be simply survival (hunting etc) otherwise it would be more common in other animals. My studies lead me to conclude that the driver is our storytelling ability. That is the uniquely human brain function which has been exaggerated over time due to mate selection. Storytelling has nothing to do with survival, and most traits which are not survival-based tend to become over-developed (eg. bright bird plumage)

By using our mind many things become more efficient Like riding a horse. Or teaming up for a hunt or sharpening stones and using language for planning.

How many programmers eating how much food does it take to answer one question on an empty computer?

Its not the brain since they all work the same but how you use it. Its up to you how that 2o% of your body energy gets allocated.

Dr. Phillip Lieberman at Brown has done the basic work on the anatomical evolution of the capacity for speech. ( Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language) The problem is standing up meant using the same pipe for breathing and food so complexity in anatomy and innervation to allow sophisticated controls which with our innovative brains eventually became guttural speech then articulated speech as we invented vocabulary and Aristotle gave us the syllogism and Rand gave us why to use reason.

Thanks for sharing. That was pretty fascinating.

I think there are a couple of leaps in there that aren't particularly well-founded however. The first is that just because you create brain soup to measure the sheer number of neurons doesn't measure overall cognitive ability. Many animals devote significant neural capacity to sensory organs (especially olfactory and auditory) which in comparison outclass human abilities (sharks and dogs come to mind). Thus I think that a far better comparison would be to build upon the work she has done but to individually divide the brains for comparison into functional areas prior to liquefaction and comparison.

I also echo the comments regarding simply cooking one's food, and would instead prefer a far more rigorous dietary examination. A cow has five stomachs to aid in the digestion of plant materials and is far more efficient at such tasks than humans, where that fiber simply passes through us. Primates are not vegetarian with specialized stomachs, so a diet heavy in plant fibers is going to be necessarily inefficient. Take koalas for example, who spend nearly their entire days eating eucalyptus leaves. A primate that subsists primarily upon proteins, however - especially animal proteins - can be much more efficient.

I applaud her for her initial work, but suggest that she draws several conclusions which we will find do not follow from the abundant evidence.