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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’

#251

Post by nicoburns »

sethrin wrote: post #188
nicoburns wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Myers-Briggs system distinguishes call these two perspectives "Sensing" (detail orientated) and "Intuition" (theory/model based) [not the best names]. And it posits that it's less a matter of importance people place on things and more that people literally notice different things and perceive the world differently (so it's not even just about remembering, it's about what you notice and how your mind represents th…

Meyers-Briggs is a fundamentally non-empirical model. I wouldn't recommend it as the basis for any argument or position concerning real world phenomena.

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-Briggs like the five-factor model don't even attempt this).

I would also point out that I was replying to a comment that was an empirical observation. My comment highlighted that their empirical observation corresponds to the pre-existing Myers-Briggs theory (which suggests that other people have previously had similar observations).

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

#252

Post by lostmsu »

imperio59 wrote: post #217

Except many people have eidetic recall and memories for their entire life so this doesn't hold water, yet another garbage study about the brain that ignores the edge cases.

Except no people have that, it is a lie, and I am willing to pay you $1M for showing anyone who can do that in a controlled setting.

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

#253

Post by tonguez »

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…

“Compression is a component of general intelligence.”

if you say so

“A few years ago I was very sceptical of machine learning ever leading to general intelligence. I've since changed my mind.”

thanks for sharing

“…both [human brains and artificial neural networks] are able to compress data into a _useful_ representation.”

thanks for pointing this out

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

#254

Post by freediver »

extheat wrote: post #247
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.

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.

But at the end of the day it feels like using an increasingly longer ladder to reach the surface of the Moon.

While imaginable, and every time we extend the ladder the Moon does get closer, it is fundamentaly impossible.

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

#255

Post by trompetenaccoun »

jamiek88 wrote: post #245
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's semantics at this point but we did not create ourselves, it was a complex process that took billions of years to create each one of us. Something being conceivable isn't the same as it being practically possible. I can imagine what you propose, but the same goes for traveling to distant stars or a time machine for going to the future. All perfectly possible in theory.

Yeah but interstellar and time travel haven’t been done, or at least we haven’t observed such. Flight had. Intelligence has.

Intelligence is an abstract concept, it depends on what exactly one means by that. I have watched a rockets take off from earth. I have never seen a self-aware machine.

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

#256

Post by sethrin »

bick_nyers wrote: post #222
sethrin wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> full resolution What, generally, do you think this might mean?

The ability to experience a memory as precisely as you want, including the option of a full mental transplant, like loading a save file for a video game. See, hear, touch, smell, taste, and think the exact same thoughts as you did 15 years ago. The playback mechanisms will have some caveats, as it may not strictly be possible to playback perfectly, as you are a different person with a different brain and body than sa…

I have aphantasia, so my experience of memories is generally closer to factual recall than sense experiences; additionally I don't have an inner monologue. Which is sort of why I asked: memory is not necessarily a record of our sense experiences. Keeping an arbitrarily precise record of our sense experiences would be quite cool and useful, but that would necessarily be a different physical process than memory, and any "memory" generated from that data would only be an interpretation of what that sensory experience might have been.

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

#257

Post by ttty »

TameAntelope wrote: post #96

I 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…

But I rather have event sourcing and save every single event in my brainy and rebuild the current state of my memory weekly or monthly.

All those inaccurate facts you learn would be gone and would not pollute your brain

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

#258

Post by throwawaygo »

Lyapunov_Lover wrote: post #244
throwawaygo wrote: post #235

Surprise!! The human brain compresses all experience into low-res summaries. Full res is not possible. :D

It doesn't, actually. There are high-res versions of important events. The locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system act in concerto with the amygdala to induce protein synthesis in the hippocampus to produce vivid episodic memories. It gets rewritten every time it's accessed, but it doesn't become abstracted away like the memory of mundane events. Semantic memory is what we call our repertoire of facts and gists and othe…

Any representation of reality should not be confused with reality. The map is not the terrain. The menu is not the meal. -post-modern philosopherzzz

It’s true varying resolutions are stored and retrieved but all are a reduction of the inputs to some useful representation.

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

#259

Post by dcposch »

freediver wrote: post #238
ascar wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've since changed my mind and currently do not believe we can achieve AGI (ever). Considering we (as in humans) developed general intelligence, isn't that already in contradiction with your statement? If it happened for us and is "easily" replicated through our DNA, it certainly can be developed again in an artificial medium. But the solution might not have anything to do with what we call machine learning today a…

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 1-10 million years." - NYT 1903

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

#260

Post by jasfi »

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…

If you're interested in AI, you can see/follow my project: https://lxagi.com.
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