That's why intuition and prejudices are such a time saver.
Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’
171–180 of 349 posts
Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’
#172I think this is why it's hard sometimes to argue in support of something you believe, even if you're right. At one point, all of the relevant facts and figures were loaded into your working memory, and with that information you arrived at a conclusion. Your brain, however, no longer needs those facts and figures; you've gotten what you needed from them, and they can be kicked out of working memory. What you store the…
Another potential upside of a brain to computer interface (Neuralink), the ability to store every memory you have ever had (while the device was installed) in full resolution.
Assuming of course you maintain a server rack at home with copious amounts of hard drives.
Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is impossible to share definitions of natural-language words, at least pending advanced brain scanning technology. That's a limitation of physical reality, not a philosophical flaw.
Are you implying that definitions aren't real because they're not physical objects?
I'm implying that natural-language definitions are physical objects, in your brain, made up of brain stuff, and that you can't write them down in ways that are much briefer than a full description of their physical manifestation, although you can roughly approximate them in something like a dictionary.
Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’
#174Most useful thing I've ever learned about memory: every time you recall a memory, you change it. Memory is not a fixed or static 'historical record'; ultimately, it's unreliable.
Just like magnetic core memory!
Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’
#175Compression is a component of general intelligence. A few years ago I was very sceptical of machine learning ever leading to general intelligence. I've since changed my mind. There are a lot of parallels to this work and the concept of "embeddings" in machine learning. Intelligence requires the ability to generalize. A prerequisite for generalization is the ability to take something high-dimensional and reduce it to…
I saw a presentation once (It was not recorded, so I can't link it) that said the difference between real intelligence and artificial intelligence is the ability to quickly learn.
As an example, he said imagine if he invented a word. Poditon. And he told us that a poditon is any object that can fit on a podium. Instantly, you know whether or not any object can be classified as a poditon. A laptop is a poditon, but a car is not.
We are not at the stage where we can just tell a program "Any object that can fit on a podium is a poditon" and then ask "Is X a poditon?" and get a correct answer. And we probably won't be there for another couple decades.
Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’
#176It's long been my hypothesis that the so-called "Mandela effect" is an effect of memory compression.
Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’
#177I think this is why it's hard sometimes to argue in support of something you believe, even if you're right. At one point, all of the relevant facts and figures were loaded into your working memory, and with that information you arrived at a conclusion. Your brain, however, no longer needs those facts and figures; you've gotten what you needed from them, and they can be kicked out of working memory. What you store the…
Sometimes I find that the solution to some questions is so complete that I don't even remember what my issue was originally.
Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Makes me think of … Asperger’s.
I would think it's being an megasavant, sort of like Kim Peek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek Not capable of functioning independently or surviving for any long period unassisted but having a brain and cognition setup that allowed for amazing feats of mental wizardry. If you could have that ability and function normally in society you could do some astounding things.
I thought that the idea of Mentats (human computers from the Dune novel) were kind of ridiculous, but yeah, when you look at savants like Peek, makes you kind of wonder if such a thing would be possible.
Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’
#179I think this is why it's hard sometimes to argue in support of something you believe, even if you're right. At one point, all of the relevant facts and figures were loaded into your working memory, and with that information you arrived at a conclusion. Your brain, however, no longer needs those facts and figures; you've gotten what you needed from them, and they can be kicked out of working memory. What you store the…
Another potential upside of a brain to computer interface (Neuralink), the ability to store every memory you have ever had (while the device was installed) in full resolution. Assuming of course you maintain a server rack at home with copious amounts of hard drives.
People will still argue that self-hosting is too hard so you might as well just accept that Evil Corp is gonna be the central store of all memories (with a great proprietary format!). Better not think of anything that violates the terms of service.
Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
That makes you a bread-oracle O, but doesn't define bread. Since there are some inputs x where O(x0) = False, some where O(x1) = True, and the laws of physics are continuous(yes, even in quantum mechanics), Buridan's Principle implies that you are incapable of deciding the breadness of arbitrary input in bounded time.
I agree that I cannot decide the breadness of arbitrary inputs in bounded time, although I contend that does not stop me from claiming to have defined bread, on the grounds that the set of Turing machines that halt is well-defined but also has the same difficulty you're describing.
A definition doesn't change: The prime numbers or Turing Machines are the same set regardless of who Putin invades next or what law Biden decides to veto.
But the set of inputs that an oracle implicitly defines, could change if the oracle changes. And you could change your mind or die tomorrow.
So you would need a very large number of definitions of bread, indexed by (time, person). Any one of them could be a valid definition - it's theoretically possible to make you look at 1000 pictures of bread so your brain is encouraged to make a bread-detector neuron, and then scan your brain and calculate its response on any input - but you don't know which one is correct to use for any purpose.
i.e. If I want to start a bakery, should I use your current bread-oracle to define "marketable bread", your bread-oracle as of 5 years ago, should I take a statistical ensemble of brain scans from millions of people, or should I use my own?
It seems like just having a function that returns true on some inputs and false on others doesn't tell you much, whereas traditional mathematical definitions have strict relations to other things.