Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It • Hacker News Board

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#51

Post by apl » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 7:51 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #26

themgt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. So much of neuroscience is still in "unknown unknown" phase, and the idea of just doing this massive interdisciplinary project to simulate a full human brain, built on the pile of sand that is any sort of "theory" of full-brain simulation ... it's like dedicating $1 billion to some dude's unpublished idea of proving P = NP. Bullshit should have been called before this ever got off the drawing board. Sure see…

> any handful of PhDs in the field could have told you was nonsense The problem with groundbreaking work is often that any handful of experts can tell you that it's nonsense. E.g., look at the reception that Barry Marshall got when he proposed that stomach ulcers were caused by bacterial infection. [1] All the experts "knew" it was caused by "stress, spicy foods, and too much acid" in the stomach. Eventually he got t…

Examples of this type are not a good guideline for policy decisions, almost by definition. For every Marshall, there's a million cranks whose ideas are rejected by the establishment and rightfully so. At the outset, all these ideas appear equally wild. But resources are scarce -- we can't just fund everything.

So what to do with a billion Euros? Obviously, we shouldn't put everything in a single pot. Particularly not in one crazy pot. That's why people complain about Markram's ego trip and enabling politicians. If you got a certain amount of funding, diversify: fund a couple of cranks, sure, but 90% should go toward what's often called normal science where small steps add up to comparatively predictable progress.

(In Markram's/the HBP's defence: Ultimately, the project will yield a metric tonne of normal science, especially in terms of infrastructure etc. However, everybody will be disappointed at the end...)

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#52

Post by orbifold » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 8:39 AM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #28

Houshalter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's unlikely that C. elegans can't even learn . It doesn't have any brain structures equivalent to ones in humans. It's neurons work totally differently. They are so different from us that anything we learn probably wouldn't apply to human brains. A more intelligent animal, ideally a mammal, would be a much better choice.

The thing I was always wondering about brain simulations is how to determine what level of detail is enough. What if neurons evolved to take advantage of some funny quantum phenomena that we may not even know about yet, and without this the simulation won't work? For this reason I would think that getting a simple brain simulation to work would at least help enumerate the physics most involved in their function. Now…

If there would be such a quantum effect it would contradict a lot of conventional theoretical physics, brains operate at high temperatures ~310 Kelvin, and the length scales involved are fairly large for quantum mechanics. You would only expect to see quantum effects at such large length scales at very low temperatures, because otherwise the correlation length is just too small.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#53

Post by orbifold » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 9:19 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #43

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #2

>While he was still in Germany, his son Kai had been diagnosed with autism. As he told The Guardian in 2013, he wanted “to be able to step inside a simulation of my son's brain and see the world as he sees it.” This is a beautiful sentiment.

Or terrifying, if you consider that a simulation of his son's brain is , in a very real sense, his son. And that when he shuts that simulation down he's killing it.

The Human Brain Project does not actually try to create a realistic human brain, instead it tries to randomly generate neurons and synapses whose statistical distribution matches those of the different kinds of neurons observed in the human brain. While this is utterly useless for things like intelligence or learning (both of which are wildly unrealistic given the simulation speed of the software system), for things like autism, parkinson which go along with abnormally distributed brain patterns it could still be very useful. I think beyond the fact that Markram probably oversold the project, the project also suffers from a clash of cultures. In fields physics and other branches of natural science it has long been a given to do simulations instead of experiments once one was reasonably sure how things worked. In the case of the Human Brain Project if the software is architected in the right way additional insights in how synapses and neurons worked and how they are connected could be incorporated over time. Obviously you wouldn't understand conciousness or learning this way, at least not right away, but solely relying on experiments, won't get you there either, since they can only deal with dozens of neurons and not much more.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#54

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 9:50 AM UTC

steve19 wrote: post #38

Rangi42 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would observe differently about your dog if he were self-aware? Self-awareness wouldn't automatically let dogs speak their minds or write philosophical treatises on existence. When a dog is just sitting still, I have no idea if they're being self-reflective or not.

Good question. I would expect him to exhibit less reliably to stimuli. His behaviour is closer to a large switch(stimulus){} statement than the emergent behavior of human reaction to situations and stimuli. One example: he was stepped on when a small puppy by a very old man from that point on and to this day, many years later, he has a major dislike of old people that he does not know well. If the same thing happened…

Human reactions are hardly freeform. Most human responses are either instinctive or socially scripted/learned - more often, some combination of the two.

The only thing that makes humans truly unique is the fact that we can store, retrieve, and process information outside our bodies. While we can question our responses, as in your example, we don't - unless we live in a social environment that suggests we should. (Not all environments do. Some actively discourage it.)

Everything else we do - solving puzzles, counting, acting socially, teaching in person, showing emotions - appears in simple forms in at least some other animals.

Going up a level, humans are actually an extremely large, planet-spanning colony organism with very limited collective consciousness. We act more like an aimless flock of birds or mound-building insects than a collective with awareness of its own planetary situation.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#55

Post by dhj » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 2:19 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #28

Houshalter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's unlikely that C. elegans can't even learn . It doesn't have any brain structures equivalent to ones in humans. It's neurons work totally differently. They are so different from us that anything we learn probably wouldn't apply to human brains. A more intelligent animal, ideally a mammal, would be a much better choice.

The thing I was always wondering about brain simulations is how to determine what level of detail is enough. What if neurons evolved to take advantage of some funny quantum phenomena that we may not even know about yet, and without this the simulation won't work? For this reason I would think that getting a simple brain simulation to work would at least help enumerate the physics most involved in their function. Now…

You don't need to appeal to "quantum effect" to think that being able to understand, well enough to simulate, THE SIMPLEST NEURAL SYSTEM of any organism would be helpful before jumping in feet first with 1 billion euros into the most complex neural system. Of course it is a process over 10 years and they have "only" spent 200 million so far. I would expect that quite a bit of that money is going to study model organisms from c. elegans to mouse to chimpanzee. Studying simpler model organisms is one of the best ways we have to understand fundamental biological principles.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#56

Post by wpietri » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

apl wrote: post #51

wpietri wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any handful of PhDs in the field could have told you was nonsense The problem with groundbreaking work is often that any handful of experts can tell you that it's nonsense. E.g., look at the reception that Barry Marshall got when he proposed that stomach ulcers were caused by bacterial infection. [1] All the experts "knew" it was caused by "stress, spicy foods, and too much acid" in the stomach. Eventually he got t…

Examples of this type are not a good guideline for policy decisions, almost by definition. For every Marshall, there's a million cranks whose ideas are rejected by the establishment and rightfully so . At the outset, all these ideas appear equally wild. But resources are scarce -- we can't just fund everything. So what to do with a billion Euros? Obviously, we shouldn't put everything in a single pot. Particularly no…

I think examples like Marshall can't be the only guideline for policy. But they are excellent examples for policy. Marshall made lives better for millions of people.

Anybody responsible for science funding should be keenly aware that the machine they steer is much better at responding to obvious failures like Markram than silent failures that ulcer treatment was for decades.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#57

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 3:50 PM UTC

nerdo wrote: post #46

taneq wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought experiment: Dogs tend to act guilty when they know they've done something wrong. If you get two dogs together, and one does something naughty, do both act guilty afterwards or only one? If only one, then is it not reasonable to assume that the guilty dog has internally models the situation as "I did bad thing, I am bad dog" but the other dog internally models the situation as "I didn't do bad thing, I am good…

Dogs act guilty in response to being scolded, not because they know they've done something wrong.

And how to do humans learn which things are wrong? Kids are scolded fairly frequently when they're young...

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#58

Post by greatthanks » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 4:13 PM UTC

steve19 wrote: post #29

marvy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you so sure mice aren't conscious? Insects probably are not, I have no strong opinion on mice, but dolphins almost definitely are.

Do you believe mice ask themselves "why do I exist?" or whether it is better "to be, or not to be"? I am genuinely interested in your perspective. I adore my dog. He shows a wide range of what I believe to be genuine emotions. But I do not think he is self-aware, and by self-aware I mean able to contemplate his own existence (and therefor lack of existence). For that matter, I don't think he ever contemplates the lac…

some people (very young children or mentally handicapped humans) don't ask those questions either.

furthermore there is a reason why in Buddhism this intellectual thinking and questioning is considered unessential to being.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#59

Post by rndn » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 4:57 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #23

rndn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a great recent Omega Tau episode on the reasons why mega projects often fail: http://omegataupodcast.net/2015/09/181-why-megaprojects-fail...

Most ambitious projects fail, period. Most startups don't succeed. I don't know if size is the issue. I don't think a high failure rate even matters. If only 10% of billion dollar projects succeed, then spending $10 billion should get you something equivalent to a working human brain simulation. And hopefully at least something is learned from the failures. Even they don't succeed at building a human brain doesn't me…

You've got no clue what you are talking about, do you? The thing is that many mega projects fail because of ridiculous reasons; mostly because high ranking people make dicisions outside the range of their expertise. Startup projects have very different characteristics and different stakeholders (i.e. mostly private). If 90% of the money could be saved then that's pretty bad.

Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It

#60

Post by PhasmaFelis » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 5:12 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #14

paulsutter wrote: post #6

Like any project, I'm sure there are many ways it can be improved. Still, I'd much rather see $1B spent imperfectly on something important - a thousand times over - rather than a trillion plus on the F-35, or so many of the ways governments spend money.

No results from a wahatever effort is still axwaste no matter how wonderful the payoff might have been. This goes to the heart of why efforts like this get funding in the first place. The funding committees get blinded by the bright light of the potential payoff, and the money gets wasted instead of going to fund and actualy deliver valuable projects that aren't as glitzy. But at least you would have ended up with a…

> No results from a wahatever effort is still axwaste no matter how wonderful the payoff might have been.

That's only true from a cynically commercial standpoint. From a scientific standpoint, negative results are every bit as important as positive ones. As Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

(Which isn't to say that we shouldn't consider the likelihood of valuable results, positive or negative, in relation to the time, money, and effort spent, just that there are important considerations besides commercial payoff potential.)