The Brain Is Not a Computer (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Brain Is Not a Computer (2016)

#71

Post by behringer » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

slowmovintarget wrote: post #64

behringer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point the data must be stored physically in the material that makes up our brain. How that is stored could very well be a 1 to 1 mapping, and shouldn't be ruled out.

And what if it is instead stored as I felt x, which led to y, which made me think z? It is conditioning of the pattern into neuronal potentials meaning that we can experience the same thing again. This is not the storage of data, it is the conditioning to react the same way at the start of a similar cascade. We don't record the memory, we make it easier to feel and think the memory again. Like muscles adapting to exe…

If that's the case, how can anybody recall 1000 digits of pi or whatever insane number they're up to these days? People don't recall it based on their feelings. It's memory storage. How it's done is still being worked out.

Re: The Brain Is Not a Computer (2016)

#72

Post by tnzn » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

behringer wrote: post #71

slowmovintarget wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what if it is instead stored as I felt x, which led to y, which made me think z? It is conditioning of the pattern into neuronal potentials meaning that we can experience the same thing again. This is not the storage of data, it is the conditioning to react the same way at the start of a similar cascade. We don't record the memory, we make it easier to feel and think the memory again. Like muscles adapting to exe…

If that's the case, how can anybody recall 1000 digits of pi or whatever insane number they're up to these days? People don't recall it based on their feelings. It's memory storage. How it's done is still being worked out.

Because you don't recall the digits, you recall yourself learning these digits. While doing so, you experience, you have feelings, although weak.

Re: The Brain Is Not a Computer (2016)

#73

Post by tnzn » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

charleshmorse wrote: post #38

I think us commenters are all on the same page here :) The author is almost making it seem like models are reality and that people think that. They're not and I don't think anyone has ever thought they were... Further and like other comments already mentioned, the brain is thought of and treated as a turing machine, not a digital computer. It's done this way, because the brain can be mapped to the definition of a tur…

>The author is almost making it seem like models are reality and that people think that. They're not and I don't think anyone has ever thought they were...

that's where you're wrong. Way too many people, many of them engineers, consider models to represent reality, and that's a real, big problem, because this is deeply linked to how they consider science.

Re: The Brain Is Not a Computer (2016)

#74

Post by bkdbkd » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 4:49 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #3

Oh dear. This isn’t my field at all, and maybe I’m just doing a bad job of understanding their point, but this sounds completely bogus. Really...the brain doesn’t create representations of visual stimuli or store memories? Under what possible definitions of those words can this statement be sensical? Surely the author believes that visual stimuli cause measurable changes in brain state, and that people can indeed rem…

Totally with you here. Not a neuroscientist. But I am a computer scientist. Lots of strong opinions, not a lot of strong facts. The analogies are interesting but they break down quick.

"We don't create representations of visual stimuli"..."We don't retrieve information or images or word from memory registers" Neither do computers in many cases. It's as if the author is saying because in the brain isn't a tape recorder or film camera then it doesn't work like a computer. Nope. Studies show that much like a computer we encode information as we store it. Because we encode it fancy ( or weird :-) doesn't mean its not encoded or retrieved. The Dollar Bill example is a red herring. Just ppitballing here: What if, instead of creating an image for the dollar, the subject's mind created a visual'thumbnail' and 'hash' of the real dollar. The thumbnail she can recall easily and lets her draw 'enough' of the bill to be vaguely recognizable. The hash, lets her recognize the real deal whenever she sees it. She simply compares the hash of this new object with list of hashes, and if its a dollar the mind finds a match. Of course, it far more sophisticated, but these simple methods, cleanly account for what the author observed.

Re: The Brain Is Not a Computer (2016)

#75

Post by bkdbkd » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 4:56 AM UTC

Meta question: Since this article is a repost and the comments from 2016 and 2019 say the article is largely incorrect, by what process did it make it to the front page. - tl;dr: this is a repost, and panned article, how's it here?