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What does the cerebellum do?

sarahconstantin.substack.com

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Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#111

Post by AngaraliTurk »

satvikpendem wrote: post #18
jjtheblunt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a great comment, seriously. It just made me start thinking and then I realized perhaps another analogy is a just in time compiler where code or skills used often enough, your body manages to compile into native neurological code and stores that appropriately.

It is always funny to see brain metaphors morph to resemble our current stage of technological development, as the years go by. First it was anima, or hydraulic analogies of spirits and fluid moving through the body. Then it was clocks, the mechanistic processes of the brain. And so on and so on until today we metaphorize the brain to be like computer hardware. In vogue as well is comparing it to neural networks, due…

In all honesty, I believe the reverse is true. Our technology seems modeled after humans and the environment we inhabit. Airplanes being glorified birds, wheels being glorified feet, computers being glorified brains or neural networks...well.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#112

Post by aziaziazi »

Spooky23 wrote: post #70
p1necone wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$800,000 is a lot of money, even after taxes you'd only have to work a few years at that salary before you could live reasonably comfortably for the rest of your life without working at all. Seems perfectly reasonably to switch to a lower stress career at some point.

The personalities attracted to the role aren’t really amenable to thinking that way.

People do change, especially when exposed a long time to stressful environnement. Ask post-burnout fellow. Fortunately most re evaluate their life before going to burn out.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#113

Post by meindnoch »

patcon wrote: post #89
satvikpendem wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always funny to see brain metaphors morph to resemble our current stage of technological development, as the years go by. First it was anima, or hydraulic analogies of spirits and fluid moving through the body. Then it was clocks, the mechanistic processes of the brain. And so on and so on until today we metaphorize the brain to be like computer hardware. In vogue as well is comparing it to neural networks, due…

Heh not sure if you're aware, but our brain seems to have a special treatment or logic for contextualizing "high technology", as indicated by one well-documented failure modes: the "influencing machine" is a feature of schizophrenia which features a delusion that contemporary high technology (magnets, pneumatics, gears, mind-control drugs, satellites, prob AI now, etc) is being used by mysterious attackers to control…

But air looms are real: https://www.theairloom.org/

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#114

Post by eurekin »

bbor wrote: post #41

Amazing article, and for a layperson who’s been reading a lot of neuroscience, the perfect level of complexity. I love an article that makes you (internally) shout “why haven’t I wondered about that before?” over and over, so thanks for that. A compliment as to clarity of purpose, I suppose. Materially; That’s bad news for anyone hoping to simulate a brain digitally. It means there’s a lot more relevant stuff to simu…

I was also stumped by this exact quote. The whole article was in the best spirit, until this.

It's a model we have, it will get updated in order to be more useful. Every engineering field builds a model of reality. Who are the connectionists? Is this some kind of "they people" label for, what causes fear in a typical layperson?

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#115

Post by eurekin »

rvba wrote: post #95

So can it be compared to simd (single instruction multiple data)? An accelerator for walking? Speculative execution?

I'm betting a higher frequency, lower latency, high throughput dedicated part. The slow stuff thinks for longer and sends a "goal" to this part, which translates that into a series of higher frequency (comparing to the slow part) activations, which are fast enough to produce fluid movement. Probably in the order of few milliseconds

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#116

Post by NhanH »

weinzierl wrote: post #97
akavi wrote: post #81

This is fascinating to me. The list of things the author suggests the cerebellum handles is a tailor-made list of things I'm oddly bad at: 1. I'm very uncoordinated, with a noticeable intentional tremor 2. I'm particularly bad at sequencing dependencies for projects/errands/household tasks. I have to write down even fairly simple sequences of subtasks or get lost in yak-shaving loops 3. When flustered, I make very di…

I can't help thinking that this is where humanity is heading. Given that the different parts of the brain have to compete for resources and given what the cerebellum does, it makes sense that a lesser developed one can be an advantage: It frees up resources for parts of the brain that are more important in our times.

Human society provides nowhere enough pressure for evolution to have effect (for good reasons), and our humanity timeline is nowhere near lengthy enough so far either. So I don’t think we are heading anywhere in that regards

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#117

Post by denton-scratch »

> While humans don’t have these kinds of sensory systems

(He's talking about sensing the 3D environment using electric fields)

I wonder whether binaural hearing is such a sensory system. You can blindfold someone, then lead them into a space. They can tell whether they're outdoors, or in a small, bare room, or a concert hall, or a room with furniture and drapes. Perhaps they can tell whether they're near or far from a wall, and in which direction.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#118

Post by helboi4 »

weinzierl wrote: post #97
akavi wrote: post #81

This is fascinating to me. The list of things the author suggests the cerebellum handles is a tailor-made list of things I'm oddly bad at: 1. I'm very uncoordinated, with a noticeable intentional tremor 2. I'm particularly bad at sequencing dependencies for projects/errands/household tasks. I have to write down even fairly simple sequences of subtasks or get lost in yak-shaving loops 3. When flustered, I make very di…

I can't help thinking that this is where humanity is heading. Given that the different parts of the brain have to compete for resources and given what the cerebellum does, it makes sense that a lesser developed one can be an advantage: It frees up resources for parts of the brain that are more important in our times.

I'm not sure about that. Being unable to anticipate context sounds terrible for pretty much any task. Having to think through every step of anything is terrible. Not being able to form sentences fluently and instead having to arrange them like puzzles is far too time consuming. The article literally is explaining how a large cerebellum is crucial for humans' high intelligence. Reallocating resources to other parts of the brain would make us stupider.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#119

Post by close04 »

weinzierl wrote: post #97
akavi wrote: post #81

This is fascinating to me. The list of things the author suggests the cerebellum handles is a tailor-made list of things I'm oddly bad at: 1. I'm very uncoordinated, with a noticeable intentional tremor 2. I'm particularly bad at sequencing dependencies for projects/errands/household tasks. I have to write down even fairly simple sequences of subtasks or get lost in yak-shaving loops 3. When flustered, I make very di…

I can't help thinking that this is where humanity is heading. Given that the different parts of the brain have to compete for resources and given what the cerebellum does, it makes sense that a lesser developed one can be an advantage: It frees up resources for parts of the brain that are more important in our times.

I imagine it's like performing a task in software ("big" brain, cerebrum) or hardware (cerebellum). One of them is faster and more efficient but very specialized. If it breaks you're left with the task being performed slower and less efficiently on the brain that can execute arbitrary code.

But I can't imagine any change in this split in responsibilities will happen on human relevant timescales. The cerebellum is probably not evolving very fast anyway, while the cerebrum might evolve comparatively faster but it has no pressure to do it. And "faster" still means tens of thousands of years.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#120

Post by emayljames »

akavi wrote: post #81

This is fascinating to me. The list of things the author suggests the cerebellum handles is a tailor-made list of things I'm oddly bad at: 1. I'm very uncoordinated, with a noticeable intentional tremor 2. I'm particularly bad at sequencing dependencies for projects/errands/household tasks. I have to write down even fairly simple sequences of subtasks or get lost in yak-shaving loops 3. When flustered, I make very di…

These seem highly related to neurodivergence, such as ASD and ADHD.
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