The brain is not a computer • Hacker News Board

Re: The brain is not a computer

#61

Post by SerLava » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:39 PM UTC

panglott wrote: post #24

iofj wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I don't see the point of this article. At first I thought it's the yearly "humans have a soul and are better than AI algorithms" story we get. Of course a mere year ago the fact that computers can't get good moves in Go was an argument. And all the arguments that came before that, voice recognition, reading, chess, games, even counting itself at one point. Of all those things that computers/"information proces…

The point of this article is the argument that the metaphor that human brains work just like computers is leading people astray in figuring out how human brains actually do work.

He really didn't show where people are struggling due to that supposed handicap. He also didn't show why brains aren't literally performing the task of computing.

I mean shit, if I judge the distance between two points, how can it not be said that I have collected sensory data and computed the result?

All of his examples were pedantic or irrelevant.

Re: The brain is not a computer

#62

Post by criddell » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:40 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #52

criddell wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people forget that there's more than one computer architecture. A computer doesn't even have to be digital.

But that's expanding the definition to "Arbitrary processing architecture we haven't even invented yet which really could simulate a human brain, if only we knew what it was and how to build it - which we don't, but that's just an engineering problem."

Analog computers have a pretty rich history.

Re: The brain is not a computer

#63

Post by throwaway76543 » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:42 PM UTC

UK-AL wrote: post #20

He has a very limited definition of a "computer". His description is how modern computers work. But that's not strictly what a computer could be. When people compare a computer to a brain. They are not saying it's like a modern pc. They are saying it like a computer in a loose sense. A lot of people don't get that, they think were comparing to the thing on desk. A computer can mean lots of things with many different…

Hell, even my current implementation doesn't store exact copies -- whenever I use a lossy algorithm.

Re: The brain is not a computer

#64

Post by zekevermillion » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:44 PM UTC

The brain is a computer. A rock, or a cloud, or a lake could also be thought of as computers via computational equivalence. You could say that a biological brain is a special type of computer. But such mystical language does not help us understand the brain, artificial brains, or computing in general.

Re: The brain is not a computer

#65

Post by SubiculumCode » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:44 PM UTC

This article is poorly thought out clickbait. Few cognitive scientists think about cognition the way that is being suggested, anf the suggested replacement is next to useless.

Re: The brain is not a computer

#66

Post by iofj » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:58 PM UTC

guard-of-terra wrote: post #60

iofj wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I don't see the point of this article. At first I thought it's the yearly "humans have a soul and are better than AI algorithms" story we get. Of course a mere year ago the fact that computers can't get good moves in Go was an argument. And all the arguments that came before that, voice recognition, reading, chess, games, even counting itself at one point. Of all those things that computers/"information proces…

> We want computers, to a large extent, and maybe even to 100%, to work like humans do http://yosefk.com/blog/ai-problems.html "We don't build machines in order to raise them and love them; we build them to get work done. If the thing is even remotely close to "intelligent", you can no longer issue commands; you must explain yourself and ask for something and then it will misunderstand you. Normal for a person, prett…

One look at the age pyramid of the world, or fertility statistics, will immediately drive home the point that we will in fact build machines to raise them and love them. I mean even in the places that for some reason currently feel comfortable with their birth statistics, there's no denying that the current generation is the last one to be larger than the one that came before it. In most countries, even that is not the case. In the US, GenX is the last one that was larger than the one before it, and only by the teensiest of margins. In Europe, that would have happened in the 80s.

A "child" that requires far less resources will be a product that will be incredibly popular. Not to mention an economic necessity.

And I would even say : 100 billion "small" AIs (scale vaguely comparable to a human mind) is a far preferable situation to one big AI. Both from a survivability standpoint and from an "oh my God it'll kill us all" standpoint.

> "We don't build machines in order to raise them and love them; we build them to get work done.

I would even say, if it's at all possible we'll do just that in the next 10-15 years. If we don't get advanced enough AI, perhaps 20-25 years.

Not a doubt in my mind.

Re: The brain is not a computer

#67

Post by panglott » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

projectramo wrote: post #38

panglott wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm looking up Anthony Chemero's book "Radical Embodied Cognitive Science", and the first sentence of the preface is: "Jerry Fodor is my favorite philosopher. I think that Jerry Fodor is wrong about nearly everything. ...My goal is that this book is for non-representational, embodied, ecological psychology what Fodor’s The Language of Thought (1975) was for rationalist, computational psychology."

Jerry Fodor himself was fond of saying, of his ideas with Ernie Lepore, "Absolutely no one agrees with us, which leads me to believe we might be right."

Chemero's book has a long section criticizing Fodor's reasoning in arguing that connectional networks are not a good model of human thinking.

Looks like there's little skepticism about the power of neural networks here, even if some of the arguments are framed in terms of computationalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectionism#Connectionism_vs...

Re: The brain is not a computer

#68

Post by Freaky » Thu, May 19, 2016, 3:01 PM UTC

> Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories.

Next up, an ornithologist tries to argue that birds don't fly, because they have muscles instead of engines and nobody can pinpoint the ailerons or control stick.

What else could a brain possibly be doing? What do you think a brain responding to stimulus and changing as a result of it is, if not a form of information processing and storage? And why would that be fundamentally non-computational just because it didn't look much like how we might hand-write software to do it?

Re: The brain is not a computer

#69

Post by tgflynn » Thu, May 19, 2016, 3:05 PM UTC

I think that the brain does something beyond or in addition to information processing because I don't see how you can get qualia or conscious experiences out of information processing alone. However to claim that information processing isn't at least an aspect of what the brain does is absurd. If you agree that sorting a list constitutes information processing then since a person equipped with pencil and paper (or without if the example is short enough) can sort a list it's clear that the person's brain has processed information.

I find it ironic that one of the things the author claims humans don't have is memories. Memory is a concept that arose to describe an aspect of human experience thousands of years before computers existed. Using the term "memory" to describe information storage in computers is indeed an analogy but it's an analogy in the opposite direction from what the author claims.

Re: The brain is not a computer

#70

Post by guard-of-terra » Thu, May 19, 2016, 3:07 PM UTC

iofj wrote: post #66

guard-of-terra wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We want computers, to a large extent, and maybe even to 100%, to work like humans do http://yosefk.com/blog/ai-problems.html "We don't build machines in order to raise them and love them; we build them to get work done. If the thing is even remotely close to "intelligent", you can no longer issue commands; you must explain yourself and ask for something and then it will misunderstand you. Normal for a person, prett…

One look at the age pyramid of the world, or fertility statistics, will immediately drive home the point that we will in fact build machines to raise them and love them. I mean even in the places that for some reason currently feel comfortable with their birth statistics, there's no denying that the current generation is the last one to be larger than the one that came before it. In most countries, even that is not t…

If one doesn't want living child, why on earth would they need mechanical one?

(Except for Japanese of course. Excluding them from this question)

Seriously, fertility will become no issue if we prolong fertile period of our lives. Imagine having one kid at thirty, and another one at sixty.