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Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

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Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#11

Post by Terr_ »

rudolf0 wrote: post #3
kensai wrote: post #2

"The work may also have wider implications. The fields of statistics and, in particular, machine learning, may have something to learn from this inner statistician. "Humans are still better than computers at solving really difficult problems," says Kepecs." Intuitive as Statistics is simply one of the many tools we humans use to tackle difficult problems, but definitely not the only one.

But it is a little disheartening (yet also exciting) to think that when an AI is eventually developed with a human's intuition, creativity, and learning ability, we'll essentially have no advantages over them.

Alternately, in order to achieve a human's "intuition, creativity, and learning ability", the AI architecture migh be required to sacrifice most of the narrow advantages we find daunting.

At that point, further "capability upgrades" may be things you can apply to both systems.

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#12

Post by haberman »

> It is Kepecs' thesis that statistics - generated by the objective processing of sensory and other data - is the ultimate language of the brain.

Every time I read stuff like this, I lose more confidence that the scientific method as currently applied, funded, and published is capable of truly conquering complex systems like the brain or nutrition.

I read article after article like this one, where a prominent researcher conducts some experiment that shows some result. But listening to that person talk about their work, it becomes clear that this has become their pet theory that they want to be capable of explaining everything. As if everything we know about some system will someday be shown to be reducible to one clean, beautiful idea.

Here are a few quick reasons why I find this idea to be highly implausible:

- There are a dizzying number of documented cognitive biases in humans. If statistics is the ultimate language of the brain, our software is pretty thoroughly buggy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

- Belief motivates people to do things that have absolutely no statistical justification. For example, the time that the prophecy of a teenage girl convinced a tribe of people in present-day South Africa to kill 300,000 - 400,000 of their own cattle, leading to the starvation and death of 20,000 - 40,000 people. How does a brain built on statistics decide that this is the most rational course of action? http://persistentfrontiers.com/xhosacattlekilling/

EDIT: Several people are replying with some form of: "your examples can still show that the mind is inherently built on statistics if you think about it in way X." Let's do a quick experiment to see if this theory is actually falsifiable. What experiment/result would convince you that statistics is not "the ultimate language of the brain?"

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#13

Post by coldtea »

rudolf0 wrote: post #3
kensai wrote: post #2

"The work may also have wider implications. The fields of statistics and, in particular, machine learning, may have something to learn from this inner statistician. "Humans are still better than computers at solving really difficult problems," says Kepecs." Intuitive as Statistics is simply one of the many tools we humans use to tackle difficult problems, but definitely not the only one.

But it is a little disheartening (yet also exciting) to think that when an AI is eventually developed with a human's intuition, creativity, and learning ability, we'll essentially have no advantages over them.

It might also be a pipe dream.

We might have a global maximum of tech we can achieve with our brain capacity that does not including building brain-level intelligence. Not because it's some special taboo/limit, maybe just because it's too high a barrier.

(Or e.g. at best we could replicate it with organic matter, e.g. grow brain cells, tissues etc, but then it won't be as potentially speedy/efficient as computer AI either).

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#15

Post by coldtea »

dfischer wrote: post #7
rudolf0 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is a little disheartening (yet also exciting) to think that when an AI is eventually developed with a human's intuition, creativity, and learning ability, we'll essentially have no advantages over them.

Why should we have an advantage ?

Because we are we, and it makes sense to root for the home team. DUH!

Why would you say should you not be killed by advanced robo-zombie AI?

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#16

Post by Lxr »

haberman wrote: post #12

> It is Kepecs' thesis that statistics - generated by the objective processing of sensory and other data - is the ultimate language of the brain. Every time I read stuff like this, I lose more confidence that the scientific method as currently applied, funded, and published is capable of truly conquering complex systems like the brain or nutrition. I read article after article like this one, where a prominent researc…

> How does a brain built on statistics decide that this is the most rational course of action?

The article suggests that humans have an innate means of determining confidence in a particular hypothesis based on evidence. Why does this imply they act rationally?

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#17

Post by webaba »

haberman wrote: post #12

> It is Kepecs' thesis that statistics - generated by the objective processing of sensory and other data - is the ultimate language of the brain. Every time I read stuff like this, I lose more confidence that the scientific method as currently applied, funded, and published is capable of truly conquering complex systems like the brain or nutrition. I read article after article like this one, where a prominent researc…

You're so right, actually there is nothing new in this idea. Kalman filters (so basically belief propagation based on gaussian observations) were already used by DL Kleinman in 1970 to model aircraft pilots behavior. We are way past this simplistic hypothesis. Actually, quantum dynamics (yeah why not, it's just a model) seem to better describe human decision making than classical stochastic models (Quantum dynamics of human decision-making - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022249606...)

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#18

Post by haberman »

Lxr wrote: post #16
haberman wrote: post #12

> It is Kepecs' thesis that statistics - generated by the objective processing of sensory and other data - is the ultimate language of the brain. Every time I read stuff like this, I lose more confidence that the scientific method as currently applied, funded, and published is capable of truly conquering complex systems like the brain or nutrition. I read article after article like this one, where a prominent researc…

> How does a brain built on statistics decide that this is the most rational course of action? The article suggests that humans have an innate means of determining confidence in a particular hypothesis based on evidence. Why does this imply they act rationally?

> The article suggests that humans have an innate means of determining confidence in a particular hypothesis based on evidence.

Yes. In my example, the hypothesis is "killing all of our cattle will make the spirits of our ancestors come to our aid." The evidence supporting this hypothesis was nonexistent. And yet the people expressed extreme confidence in this hypothesis by killing all of their cattle.

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#20

Post by prodmerc »

coldtea wrote: post #13
rudolf0 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is a little disheartening (yet also exciting) to think that when an AI is eventually developed with a human's intuition, creativity, and learning ability, we'll essentially have no advantages over them.

It might also be a pipe dream. We might have a global maximum of tech we can achieve with our brain capacity that does not including building brain-level intelligence. Not because it's some special taboo/limit, maybe just because it's too high a barrier. (Or e.g. at best we could replicate it with organic matter, e.g. grow brain cells, tissues etc, but then it won't be as potentially speedy/efficient as computer AI e…

I think that's why the focus is on deep learning and self improvement for AIs.

We may not be able to create an AI that's as intelligent as us, but we can create a rudimentary AI that can then make itself smarter as time goes by (and since it can be practically immortal it would have a lot of time to learn) and which can be easily duplicated later.

Downside is we probably won't know what it's actually thinking and what it will do...

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