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Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

directorsblog.nih.gov

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Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#281

Post by nl »

sethrin wrote: post #262
nicoburns wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Myers-briggs is fundamentally non-empirical. Empirical evidence is certainly lacking for it, but I think there's a good argument to be made that this is due to poor experimental design (for example applying the categorisations to persons rather than to mental processes) and a general difficulty in empirically measuring internal mental processes (it's notable that more mainstream competitors to the Myers…

No, Meyers-Briggs is fundamentally non-empirical, it has no empirical validity, nor was it derived from any empirical process. If you have a personal faith in its validity then I'm sure I don't mean to disrespect that.

While the Myers-Briggs test is pretty weak, it is inaccurate to say that it has absolutely no empirical validity.

Test have shown that MBTI results do correlate with Big Five personality traits[1] which are generally regarded as valid.

See https://web.archive.org/web/20121011195955/http://leadu-libr...

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

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#282

Post by EricMausler »

axg11 wrote: post #35

Compression 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…

>The ideal compression (from an intelligence point of view) is both information efficient and maximally composable

This leads the compression to be overfitted to the learning environment. Not that our intelligence is entirely immune to that either

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#283

Post by vikingerik »

dcposch wrote: post #259
freediver wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a contradiction as I meant "achieving" in the context of creating it (through software). The fact it happened to us is undeniable (from our perspective), but the how/why of it is still one of the many mysteries of the universe - one we will likely never solve.

FWIW this is the same argument once made against human flight. In the late 19th century, there were a lot of debates in the form > Clearly flight is possible, birds do it > Sure but how/why is one of the many mysteries of the universe, one we will likely never solve. "Man won't fly for a million years – to build a flying machine would require the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanics for 1-1…

The real answer to how birds fly is that they're extremely light weight so that wing muscles can lift them. Common pigeons or seagulls only weigh about 2 or 3 pounds. The largest birds of prey top out around 18. Anything heavier is flightless. A 150-pound human isn't getting anywhere on wing muscle power.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#284

Post by Forgeties79 »

freediver wrote: post #254
extheat wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious why you think that. Do you think it’s a fundamental problem with the discrete nature of traditional computers? Or a problem with scale and computational limits? If it’s the latter, if a hypothetical computer has unlimited time and memory capacity, why do you think AGI would remain impossible?

Machines are good at computation, which is not equal to reasoning, but rather a subset of reasoning. And not only they are good at computation, but they are exceptionally good at it - I have no illusion of trying to compete with a machine doing square roots or playing chess. And increasingly harder problems are being expressed as computation problems, with more or less success - most famously probably self-driving. B…

I’ve never heard that moon analogy before - what a great way of putting it.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#285

Post by selestify »

whatshisface wrote: post #271
jameshart wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since Gödel we’ve had a pretty convincing proof that there is nothing that you can do in terms of reasoning that can’t be expressed using computation. And since Turing we’ve got a framework that shows there’s nothing computable that you can’t compute using a universal computer. So unless there’s something mystical beyond the realm of mathematics to ‘reasoning’ it can’t be a superset of computing. If a finite amo…

There are actually a lot of well-defined things beyond the power of a Turing machine (for example a Turing machine plus a halting oracle that only works on Turing machines without a halting oracle) but in terms of finite amounts of electrons doing normal low-energy electronic stuff you are quite likely correct. Humanity may go beyond computability if as some papers have suggested quantum gravity requires solving unco…

Even if our brains reason based on quirks of quantum mechanics (seems unlikely given the scale at which neurons operate), what stops us from creating non-biological machines that interact with QM in the same way to produce artificial reasoning?

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#286

Post by loa_in_ »

playpause wrote: post #246
amelius wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep drawing until what is on paper equals what is in your imagination. Seriously, try it.

Can you expand on this? Can you give an example of a kind of image it might work well with? I’ve always assumed the apparent detail of mental images was a kind of illusion, a bit like the illusion of detail outside the centre of the visual field.

Well, only you can find out. About yourself. It's also up to you how much time you're willing to sink into this

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#287

Post by loa_in_ »

nh23423fefe wrote: post #59
goaaron wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The human brain also forgets, something that may be a feature instead of a bug. Also, beyond compression––brains are simulation machines: imagining new scenarios. Curios to understand if ML provides anything analogous to simulation that isn't rote interpolation.

I think the simulation aspects of conscious and intelligence are fundamental. We don't simulate the world, we simulate what we might experience.

I don't think it's true. I can imagine a lot of aspects of systems around me I cannot possibly experience in any way, except maybe them leading to some outcome that I might experience as well. I sometimes do verify this experimentally, but that comes later.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#288

Post by dannyw »

agumonkey wrote: post #145
fudged71 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a great article on this recently. The author made the point that if there was a day, week, or month where there were no backups or photos then you might put less value on that time of your life in retrospect. Conversely there might be a timespan where you took too many photos and might feel like there was more value to be had in that time.

Interesting. I forgot who said that in your best moments you don't have time for anything else. Indeed if you don't take pics it might just be because it was deeply interesting and not worth taking your smartphone out of your pocket.

I like to take 1 photo a day no matter what, and put it in my digital journal (Day One).

It is really nice to have a ritual where you review your day before bed; and after doing this for 5 years, I have an awesome photo journal.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#289

Post by whatshisface »

selestify wrote: post #285
whatshisface wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually a lot of well-defined things beyond the power of a Turing machine (for example a Turing machine plus a halting oracle that only works on Turing machines without a halting oracle) but in terms of finite amounts of electrons doing normal low-energy electronic stuff you are quite likely correct. Humanity may go beyond computability if as some papers have suggested quantum gravity requires solving unco…

Even if our brains reason based on quirks of quantum mechanics (seems unlikely given the scale at which neurons operate), what stops us from creating non-biological machines that interact with QM in the same way to produce artificial reasoning?

I am not saying that anything more than a really big computer is necessary for reasoning, only that one day physics knowledge may reach beyond the Turing machine (quantum computing does not).
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