Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by nl » Thu, May 05, 2016, 6:35 AM UTC

haberman wrote: post #68

notahacker wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'm convinced that statistics is the language of the brain, but I am convinced that statistical inference is one of the main reasons why individuals (and later, populations) come to believe in some highly irrational superstitions - the ones where there's no reason to assume causality at all save for correlation of rare events (particularly if we're assuming imperfect use of statistics influenced by our c…

> "This cattle-killing sounds crazy but since she was right about some other low probability events..." Ok you have a story. I can tell a different story: "My tendency towards religious/supernatural belief that has helped me and my ancestors form moral codes and act tribally has in this case caused me to embrace a belief that will lead to the ruin of me and my people. These religious/supernatural beliefs are inherent…

These religious/supernatural beliefs are inherently anti-statistical

No they aren't. They follow the Laplace–Bayes estimator for calculating the rule of succession[1].

I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it rained

I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it didn't rain -> I must have done something wrong

Both are perfectly valid rules of succession - not forgetting that most religious beliefs make it pretty easy to find something you did wrong. One might suspect these rules could have been caused by spurious statistical relationships.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_succession

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

#82

Post by haberman » Thu, May 05, 2016, 6:49 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #81

haberman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This cattle-killing sounds crazy but since she was right about some other low probability events..." Ok you have a story. I can tell a different story: "My tendency towards religious/supernatural belief that has helped me and my ancestors form moral codes and act tribally has in this case caused me to embrace a belief that will lead to the ruin of me and my people. These religious/supernatural beliefs are inherent…

These religious/supernatural beliefs are inherently anti-statistical No they aren't. They follow the Laplace–Bayes estimator for calculating the rule of succession[1]. I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it rained I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it didn't rain -> I must have done something wrong Both are perfectly valid rules of succession - not forgetting that most religious beliefs make it pretty easy to…

> I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it rained [...] I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it didn't rain -> I must have done something wrong

This is a textbook example of a non-falsifiable experiment. I'm not sure why you would argue that you can draw meaningful statistical inferences from such an experiment.

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

#83

Post by haberman » Thu, May 05, 2016, 6:55 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #79

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…

The theory isn't that "statistics are the ultimate language of the brain". That's just a summary designed for popular consumption. Unfortunately the links to the source article don't work, but from careful reading it appears that the real theory is that the brain tracks confidence in its measurement of data, and uses this confidence when making decisions. This is a Bayesian approach, and it has been widely speculated…

> The theory isn't that "statistics are the ultimate language of the brain".

That's not the theory of this specific paper, but the says that this researcher considers this paper a "first step" towards this more general theory.

> This theory is falsifiable, because you can ask people their confidence in the original measurements, their confidence in a decision depending on that, and then use Bayes' rule to see if those confidences have propagated.

If your standard is that humans will apply Bayes' theorem correctly, completely intuitively, as more evidence becomes available, I think it will be very easy to falsify that.

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

#84

Post by nl » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:13 AM UTC

haberman wrote: post #82

nl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These religious/supernatural beliefs are inherently anti-statistical No they aren't. They follow the Laplace–Bayes estimator for calculating the rule of succession[1]. I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it rained I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it didn't rain -> I must have done something wrong Both are perfectly valid rules of succession - not forgetting that most religious beliefs make it pretty easy to…

> I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it rained [...] I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it didn't rain -> I must have done something wrong This is a textbook example of a non-falsifiable experiment. I'm not sure why you would argue that you can draw meaningful statistical inferences from such an experiment.

I'm not arguing this is falsifiable, or an experiment - I'm arguing that it could be statistically interfered.

"Statistically valid" != Correct (if your input assumptions are incorrect).

See up thread for ways to build falsifiable experiments.

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

#85

Post by dschiptsov » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:23 AM UTC

Our brain, presumably, uses much simpler, primitive thresholds, like dynamic weights in a weighted sum.

As one might deduce from the facts of brain's physiology and development, especially prooning of neurons in the processe of maturation, the key is "a trained structure" to which a weighted graph is, perhaps, the most adequate model, which is shaped by highly specialized centers in the process of continuous training. At least all pattern recognition, including language and vision, presumably implemented this way.

The principle is of combination by trial and error of simplest, smallest, stable, reusable building blocks - specialized cells.

Three is no general purpose computer in a brain. It is a network of structured layers of microcontrollers.)

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

#86

Post by nl » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:24 AM UTC

haberman wrote: post #83

nl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory isn't that "statistics are the ultimate language of the brain". That's just a summary designed for popular consumption. Unfortunately the links to the source article don't work, but from careful reading it appears that the real theory is that the brain tracks confidence in its measurement of data, and uses this confidence when making decisions. This is a Bayesian approach, and it has been widely speculated…

> The theory isn't that "statistics are the ultimate language of the brain". That's not the theory of this specific paper, but the says that this researcher considers this paper a "first step" towards this more general theory. > This theory is falsifiable, because you can ask people their confidence in the original measurements, their confidence in a decision depending on that, and then use Bayes' rule to see if thos…

If your standard is that humans will apply Bayes' theorem correctly, completely intuitively, as more evidence becomes available, I think it will be very easy to falsify that.

Yes. And there is increasing evidence that this is correct. See[1]. If you can find a copy, I think [2] will address many of your concerns about seemingly irrational behavior being supported by statistical reasoning.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_approaches_to_brain_f...

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19477333

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

#87

Post by haberman » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:29 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #84

haberman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it rained [...] I needed rain -> I did a rain dance -> it didn't rain -> I must have done something wrong This is a textbook example of a non-falsifiable experiment. I'm not sure why you would argue that you can draw meaningful statistical inferences from such an experiment.

I'm not arguing this is falsifiable, or an experiment - I'm arguing that it could be statistically interfered. "Statistically valid" != Correct (if your input assumptions are incorrect). See up thread for ways to build falsifiable experiments.

If your argument is that the human mind functions primarily in terms of valid statistical inferences, it doesn't support your case if it processes its input in ways that are inherently flawed and biased.

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

#88

Post by cel1ne » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:53 AM UTC

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…

What I find very peculiar is that everybody talks about AI but no one mentions how the brain is comprised of many different areas that work differently and regulate each other.

It's not all the prefrontal cortex detecting patterns.

The kind of signal the amygdala fires because of a change in body temperature is different than a "pixel" changing in your visual cortex.

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

#89

Post by Houshalter » Thu, May 05, 2016, 8:14 AM UTC

IanCal wrote: post #72

stormbrew wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a matter of precision. The fact that you can probably start adjusting in a meaningful and probably correct way while the ball is still going up is significant. Somehow that person's brain is doing a thing they may not have the symbolic knowledge to describe.

> Somehow that person's brain is doing a thing they may not have the symbolic knowledge to describe. And we can draw roughly correct circles but most people don't know the equation for one. I'm not sure that's particularly significant though, but I may have missed your point.

No the ability to draw circles is impressive. The amount of math and calculations being done in the brain to perform such a feat is incredible. Programming robots to do even a limited range of the things humans do, is nearly impossible.

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

#90

Post by Houshalter » Thu, May 05, 2016, 8:22 AM UTC

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…

Human brains do statistics at a low level. This is what the experiment tested.

An example experiment would be if you gave someone a rewards with different probabilities after some random event like clicking, and the brain would learn to estimate the probability that a sequence of clicks would lead to a reward.

On a high level this obviously breaks down. The brain doesn't have thousands of examples of slaughtering cows leading to starvation. Cognitive biases all operate at a high level of reasoning, and involve verbal arguments and stuff. But on a low level, the brain is absolutely statistically based.