Marvel and DC Lego Minifigure Collection and Diorama

Here are some pictures of a comic book Lego minifigure diorama that I made over the last few months. I was so excited that Lego started producing sets with my favorite heroes in them, starting in 2012, that I just had to collect them. To start to understand what possessed me to do this read here. What follows are pictures from the display that is split between the Marvel universe and the DC universe. There is a link to a video and a list of the included minifigs below.  I hope you enjoy the pictures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx26U8REOA8

Click on one of these pictures to see a larger image and open the "photo viewer."

Marvel vs. DC

Thanos and the Infinity Gems

The Avengers and Stark Industries

The Avengers Roster

Spiderman and Enemies

The Punisher Shoot Out

X-Men and Enemies

Power Man, and Iron Fist vs. the Hand in Japan

Marvel Space Scene

X-men Danger Room

Stark Arcade Emporium

Superman, Brainiac, Luthor and Zod

DC Rogues Gallery

The Justice League

The Batcave

Teen Titans and Young Justice

The Lanterns

Gotham City Bank Shootout

Shazam, Black Adam and Faucet City Subway

Arkham Asylum

Smallville with Lois and Clark 

Minifigures Included in the Diorama:

Marvel Universe:

Adam Warlock

Aldrich Killian

Ant Man

Archangel

Ares

Aunt May

Beast

Beetle

Black Panther

Black Suit Spiderman

Bruce Banner

Bulls Eye

Captain America

Captain Britain

Carnage

Colossus

Cyclops

Daken

Daredevil

Dazzler

Deadpool

Dr. Doom

Dr. Octopus

Dr. Strange

Electra 

Emma Frost

Extremis Soldier

Fantomex

Firestar

Forge

Gambit

Ghost Rider

Giant Man

Green Phoenix

Gwen Stacy

Hawkeye

Hobgoblin

Hulk

Human Torch

Hydra Agent

Iceman

Invisible Woman

Iron Fist

Iron Man

Iron Man mark 5

Iron Patriot

J Jonah Jameson

Jean Grey

Juggernaut

Kronos

Lizard

Loki

Luke Cage

Magneto

Mandarin

Mary Jane Watson

Miles Morales

Moonstone

Mr. Fantastic

Ms Marvel

Multiple Man

Mysterio

Nick Fury

Nightcrawler

Pepper Potts

Pheonix

Power Man

Psylocke

Punisher

Quicksilver

Red She Hulk

Red Skull

Rescue

Rhino

Rogue

Sabertooth

Scarlet Spider

Scarlet Spiderman

Scarlet Witch

Sentry

Shadowcat

She Hulk

Shocker

Spider Woman

Spiderman

Spiderman 2099

Spiderwoman

Storm

Task Master

Thanos

Thing

Thor

Tigra

Tony Stark

Venom

Vision

War Machine

Wasp

Wasp

Weapon X

Whiplash

White Tiger

Wolverine

DC Universe:

Alfred

Aqua Lad

Aqua Man

Atrocitus

Azrael

Bane

Batgirl

Batman

Batman Electro Suit

Bizarro

Black Adam

Black Canary

Black Hand

Black Lantern Superman

Black Lightning

Black Manta

Black Mask

Blue Beetle (Dan Garrett)

Blue Beetle (Jamie Reyes)

Blue Lantern St. Walker

Brainiac

Bronze Tiger

Cat Woman

Cheetah

Clark Kent

Connor

Cyborg Superman

Damian Wayne

Deadshot

Deathstorm

Deathstroke

Dr. Fate

Faora

Firestorm

Gorilla Grodd

Green Arrow

Green Lantern (Guy Gardner)

Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)

Green Lantern (John Stewart)

Grey Ghost

Guardian of the Universe

Harleen Quinzel

Harley Quinn

Hugo Strange

Huntress

Hush

Jim Gordon

Joker

Jor-El

KG Beast

Kid Flash

Killer Croc

Kilowog

Lantern Guardian

Lex Luthor

Lois Lane

Manbat

Martian Manhunter

Mr. Freeze

Mr. Mind

Ms Martian

Nightwing

Penguin

Plastic Man

Poison Ivy

Powergirl

Red Hood

Red Tornado

Riddler

Robin (Dick Grayson)

Robin (Jason Todd)

Robin (Tim Drake)

Shazam

Sinestro

Soloman Grundy

Starfire

Starman

Superboy

Supergirl

Tor-An

Undead Superman

Vacation Joker

Wonder Woman

Zatanna

Zod

Zoom

Zsasz

Characters featured in the Pictures:

Marvel Universe:

Abomination

Absorbing Man

Annihilus

Apocalypse

Arcade

Attuma

Beta Ray Bill

Beyonder

Black Bolt

Brood

Cable

Cameron Hodge

Captain Universe

Celestials

Champion

Champion

Collector

Count Nefaria

Cross Bones

Crossbones

Darkhawk

Death

Death’s Head

Deathlok

Dormammu

Dread Knight

Ego

Electro

Galactus

Gardener

Giant Man

Grandmaster

Grim Reaper

Hercules

Hyperion

Impossible Man

In-Betweener

Jubilee

Kang

Kingpin

Korvac

Kraven

Kraven

Leader

Living Tribunal

Lord Chaos

Mad Thinker

Madeline Pryor

Mar-vell

Master Order

Mephisto

Microchip

Modok

Mojo

Mojo

Molecule Man

Moleman

Mr. Sinister

Namor

Polaris

Professor X

Purple Man

Quasar

Quasar

Red Hulk

Ronen the Accuser

Runner

Sandman

Sandman

Sauron

Scorpion

Sebastian Shaw

Sentinel

Shatterstar

Silver Surfer

Skrulls

Solo

Stranger

Toad

Uatu the Watcher

Ultron

Vulture

Wizard

Yellow Jacket

DC Universe:

Adam Strange

Amazo

Anti-Monitor

Atom

Atom Smasher

Atomic Skull

Batmite

Beast Boy

Booster Gold

Captain Cold

Ch’p

Clayface

Darkseid

Deadman

Desaad

Despero

Doomsday

Dr. Light

Dr. Polaris,

Dr. Sivanna

Eclipso

Etrigan

Extant

Hawkman

Imperiex

Krypto

Larfleeze

Lord Havok

Mad Hatter

Mary Marvel

Metal Men

Metamorpho

Mongul

Mr. Mind

Mr. Miracle

Mxyzptlk

Obsidian

Parallax

Parasite

Phantom Stranger

Raven

Scarface and the Ventriloquist

Star Sapphire

Starro

Toyman

Zuggernaut

Practical Joke in Article Acknowledgements

I fully intended to include the below acknowledgements after the final round of peer review for an article that I wrote on working memory, neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to express my gratitude to Reed Richards, Hank McCoy, Thomas Wayne, and Thaddeus Bodog Sivana for fruitful and encouraging discussions. I would also like to thank Nick Rivera, Elmer Hartman and Steve Brule who have taken the time to read and comment on the manuscript as I am greatly indebted for their thoughtful help and criticisms. Special thanks to Otto Octavius, Henry Pym, Victor von Doom and Ultron V for thoughtful feedback on technical aspects of A.I. architectures. I dedicate this article to these fine friends. This research was made possible due to generous support from the SHIELD bureau, the HAMMER agency, the Hydra organization, Wayne Enterprises, Oscorp Technologies, Capsule Corporation, Globex Industries, LexCorp International. and Stark Resilient.  


I really thought it would be fun to include a nod to some of my favorite fictional scientists, people who actually HAVE influenced my thoughts about science over the years. I decided not to include it out of respect for the journal, but I wanted to make it available here on my blog.

The actual article can be found here:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938416308289

  

 

The Neurological Process Responsible for Internally Generated Thought: Short Term Continuity

What follows is the text for the poster that I presented at the 2013 conference for the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, ASSC 17, July 12th-15th.

Abstract

Reciprocal interactions between bottom-up sensory areas and top-down association areas maintain, discard, and transform information resulting in the orchestration of imagery generation and internally guided thought. Representations are temporarily maintained in association areas and utilized as imagery specifications that are fed back into lower-order sensory areas where they are continually used in the construction of successive topographic maps. Salient features from these transient, sensory maps progress up the cortical hierarchy where they activate the corresponding representations in association cortex, adding them to the store of temporarily maintained features. Thus, the most salient, novel, or goal-relevant features from the last several mappings are maintained in association areas. The fact that some representations within association areas remain active for prolonged periods, over the duration of several reciprocal top-down to bottom-up transformations, is taken to account for the continuity found between successive topographic maps. The sustained and dynamically overlapping activity of higher-order association nodes allows consecutive topographic maps to: have related content, exhibit progressive qualities, implement learned algorithms, and carry thematic or narrative continuity over sequential processing states.

Introduction

The general intention of the present work is to delineate a multistep neurological process suggested to be responsible for mental continuity and internally generated thought. The work considers how sustained neural firing of nodes in association cortex underlies the uninterrupted persistence of goal-relevant fragments of long term memory (LTM), allowing an interrelated sequence of brain states.

When mammals process information, they match perceptual stimuli with preexisting, invariant, template-like representations held in memory. These representations are composed of groups of highly connected cortical neurons that can be repeatedly used to represent the most frequently associated features of a common, reoccuring event or stimulus. These ensembles are suggested to be composed of large groups of neurons that have been bound due to simultaneous activity in the past. When multiple representations are coactivated the individual elements spread and pool their activation energy resulting in the selection of representations for continued activation, deactivation and new activation. This process is suggested to select the content for the stream of thought.

FIG.1 is a diagram illustrating the ways in which high-level features are displaced, maintained, and newly activated in the brain to form a “stream” or “train” of thought. Each representation is represented by a letter. 1) Shows that feature A has already been deactivated and that B, C, D and E are now coactivated. When coactivated, these features spread and pool their activation energy, resulting in the convergence of activity onto a new feature, F. Once F becomes active, it immediately becomes a coactivate, restarting the cycle. 2) Shows that feature B has been deactivated while C, D, E and F are coactivated and G is newly activated.

Neurological Continuity

Activity from active representations fluctuates back and forth between early, bottom-up sensory cortex (where activity is metric, topographic and transient) and late, top-down association cortex (where activity is abstract, conceptual and persistent). Currently active representations in association areas spread their unique constellation of activity backwards through the structurally descriptive hierarchy towards sensory areas, where they are used to guide the construction of composite topographical maps. Sensory areas and association areas continually stimulate each other into building interpretations of the other’s outputs resulting in a continual conversational interchange.

The fact that some ensembles within association areas remain active for prolonged periods, over the duration of several reciprocal top-down to bottom-up communications, is taken to account for instances of continuity found between successive topographic maps. This feature of continued activation augments associative searches by allowing specific representations to be used as function parameters for more than one cycle. The longer ensembles in association areas can be continuously activated - over a series of states - the longer they can influence sequences of sensory imagery in a sustained and consistent way allowing continuous, progressive alterations to the imagery. The result is a stream of consciousness where each thought is quantitatively different from preceding thoughts, as newly relevant representations are added and the least relevant ones are removed.

FIG 2. is a diagram depicting the reciprocal transformations of information between lower-order sensory nodes and higher-order PFC nodes. Sensory areas can only create one sensory image at a time, whereas the PFC is capable of holding the salient or goal-relevant features of several sequential images at the same time.

Mental Continuity

The pattern of activity in the brain is constantly changing, but because some individual neurons exhibit sustained firing during these changes, particular features of the overall pattern will be continuous, uninterrupted, or conserved over time. The most enduringly active PFC nodes correspond to what the individual is most focused on, the underlying theme or element that stays the same as other contextual features fluctuate. If it were not for the phenomenon of sustained firing, information could not be carried over to subsequent states, and the ability to process or make associations between temporally distant stimuli would be disrupted. This may be why the prefrontal cortex is associated with working memory, executive function, mental modeling, planning, and goal setting. This may also explain why agents without the analogue of a PFC, such as most life forms and current artificial intelligence, do not exhibit human-like higher-order thinking.

Where does this process initiate? Perhaps there is no objective stopping or starting point of thought. Instead, thought itself may be composed of the startings and stoppings of huge numbers of individual elements that exhibit staggered and overlapping activity (Reser, 2012, 2013). In the most intelligent animals, thoughts are composed of larger sets of elements that are capable of remaining coactivated longer allowing motor output and sensory activity to reflect several seconds of overlapping association activity.

FIG. 3 shows that representations B, C, D, and E, which are held active in the PFC, all spread their activation energy to lower-order sensory areas where a composite image is built that is based on prior experience with these features. 2) Shows that features involved in the retinotopic imagery from time sequence 1 converge on the PFC neurons responsible for feature F. Feature B drops out of activation, and C, D, E and F remain active and diverge back onto visual cortex, mirroring the pattern of activity shown in Figure 1.

Conclusions

Mammals most likely evolved the capacity to use the DA/PFC system to sustain certain representations so that important groupings of representations could be interrogated and modeled. The PFC representations of rewarding, punishing, salient, uncertain, or unpredicted events are kept active over time to aid in the processing of their significance. It is highly probable that sequences of lower-order topographic images depict and explore hypothetical relationships between higher-order, top-down representations. Because these features remain active, they can be used repeatedly as specifications that guide the generation of mental imagery in sensory areas. The continuity causes each new topographic map to be embedded in the previous one, creating a cyclical, nested flow of information processing. This amounts to a continual attempt to search sensory memory for a topographic image that can meaningfully incorporate the important features.

The feature that is referred to here as mental continuity may be a major facet of the general factor of intelligence and may exhibit individual differences in humans where severe deficits in this capacity may map onto various clinical syndromes, such as: psychosis, schizophrenia, mental retardation, cognitive aging, dementia, intoxication, prefrontal injury and others. Mental continuity as described here may be an integral element of sentience and intentionality and may be a strong candidate for a “neural correlate of consciousness.” Is it possible that an individual’s identity and “self” may directly correspond to this wandering, gradually transforming distribution of temporarily sustained representations?

The full article based on this poster can be found here:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938416308289

If you found this interesting, please visit aithought.com. The site delves into my model of working memory and its application to AI, illustrating how human thought patterns can be emulated to achieve machine consciousness and superintelligence. Featuring over 50 detailed figures, the article provides a visually engaging exploration of how bridging the gap between psychology and neuroscience can unlock the future of intelligent machines.

Philosophical Zombies Would Require Extensive Compensatory Programming

Zombies of the type encountered in philosophical studies of the mind, such as the ones popularized by David Chalmer’s, would not be physically possible without an incredible amount of compensatory programming. I believe that the processes that allow us to have consciousness are key to our functioning, and to intelligent behavior, so to remove them and yet preserve the other functions would be implausible. Every way that I can conceive of to design such a zombie, involves creating an agent that is in fact much more complicated than a human. By this I mean that it would have to have more processing resources and a larger memory. 

Taking the entity out of the agent requires the agent to be capable of performing all of the same functions without the shortcuts made possible by sentience and self-awareness. I think that philosophers that discuss these hypothetical zombies have not considered this contention, mainly that: consciousness acts as a shortcut to devising behavior, and a zombie without consciousness (without Gazzaniga’s “interpreter” and without “mental continuity”) would necessitate a tremendous number of if-then rules that could allow it to make the same inferences and decisions that consciousness allows us to make. 

Programming the computational architecture for a zombie-like, artificially intelligent agent capable of performing human behaviors, in human-like ways, without any conscious insight, would necessitate a battery of rules and subsystems to instantiate simulacra of wanting, liking and feeling. To identify all of the various components of desire and sensation, and to coldly mimic them without actually replicating them would be incredibly complicated. In fact, I believe that to go this route, which some A.I. scientists are currently doing in my opinion, would be far more difficult than creating an A.I. agent that does use intentionality, mental continuity and consciousness.

If you found this interesting, please visit aithought.com. The site delves into my model of working memory and its application to AI, illustrating how human thought patterns can be emulated to achieve machine consciousness and superintelligence. Featuring over 50 detailed figures, the article provides a visually engaging exploration of how bridging the gap between psychology and neuroscience can unlock the future of intelligent machines.