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

#61

Post by marvy » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 7:29 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…

No way, I did not mean to imply I thought that mice do that. But I think that's setting the bar too high. How often does the average person ask themselves such questions after all? I think four year olds are conscious, and yet I doubt that they ask such questions either, and might even look at you funny if you asked them such a question.

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

#62

Post by streptomycin » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 10:17 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #19

streptomycin wrote: post #3

I was never satisfied with their explanation for why they had to start with the human brain rather than the brain of a MUCH simpler organism like C. elegans.

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.

My line of thinking is, say it'll cost X to model C. elegans.

For even the simplest mammals (let alone humans), surely the cost is >> X. So might it be a decent idea to give it a shot with C. elegans first? Because if we fail with C. elegans, we're almost guaranteed to fail with a mammal. And it's not immediately clear to me that we currently have the ability to do it successfully even for C. elegans.

I am definitely not a neuroscientist so maybe I am misguided. I'm also not wedded to C. elegans as being the ideal prototype, and I doubt anyone is (except possibly the people already studying C. elegans). But the first attempt should definitely be on something as simple as possible.

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

#63

Post by aggerdmon » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 12:46 AM UTC

amatic wrote: post #17

John Cleese, of all people, summarized our current knowledge of the nervous system best in this video: https://youtu.be/FQjgsQ5G8ug?t=20 We are clueless. A lot of what is published is just neurobabble, even in 'serious' journals. As others have pointed out, we still don't even know how to simulate a brain of a tiny worm with 302 neurons. Talking about simulating billions of neurons is beyond fantasy, and funding such…

[Ok, I just saw in another one of you're posts your MA involved perceptual control theory, so yah, right on. I have this written already and feel a little silly now, but I figure the links are good and worth posting.]

I am finishing up my undergraduate right now in psychology, and while I want to defend the work that is being done by cognitive psychologists on concepts at higher levels of abstraction (Many researchers working in more mathematical areas of psychology tend towards working on things like consciousness, perception, concepts and categorization. There are cool advances in it, but I won't go too much into it in this post. I guess I'm just trying to say that you end up working with constructs that have higher barriers of entry to communicating outside of groups of researchers who get excited about modeling and the perceptual measurement theory.) I digress with that though. The main reason I wanted to comment is that your comment on understanding things like pointing hit on one of my favorite areas of psychology that has tragically always been somewhat nitch, but provides a lot of interesting connections between different areas if you take the time to get into it. There is a thread in the field of psychology that does just this kind of research, termed sometimes ecological psychology. It is often referred to colloquially as Gibsonian psychology, termed after [JJ Gibson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Gibson) who is seen as the father of the field(its practitioner's are known colloquially as Gibsonians).

I was lucky enough to take the Geoffrey Bingham's (who specializes reach to grasp behavior iirc) Perception/Action course a few years back, and found it immensely rewarding.* The primary text for the course was JJ Gibson's classic book "The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception". The philosophical foundations of gibsons theory of affordances is to take a realist approach to perception. (Avoiding the troubles that mind-body dualism imposes; taking a more Heidegerrian approach). The classic mantra of the field is ask not what is in you're mind, but what you're mind is in. I wish I had time to say more now, but I need to run here. But I'll leave you with a few snippets of what I took away from the course, and some links I think you'll enjoy, and can furnish more if you would be interested.

The Archival Gibson Video Series (Whoever assembled these had perfect choice in music)

[Reversibility and event perception](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwVLny6Ymsk)

[Optical Transitions:Visible To Invisible](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qQLtIICXoE)

[Motion Paralax and Percieved Depth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVSaWXqQh0w)

Disclaimer I haven't watched this video, but the idea that perception of throw-ability may explain size weight illusions is a surprising one.

[Geoff Bingham - Haptics: throwing and the size-weight illusion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud9JB4NYUvA)

* I really need to digitize those notes...

Btw: Awesome Arm.

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

#64

Post by marvy » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 2:55 AM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #54

steve19 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the case for a collective consciousness for humanity is much too weak. An insect colony does way better. At least most individual insects tend to act toward the common good, rather than waging war on other insects in the same colony.