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0 pointslern_too_spel2y ago0 comments

Visarga used the word literally and stated in broad strokes what the brain does (process input, update state, emit outputs) without the details of how it does so. You're the one who misinterpreted that as meaning we already know exactly how the brain works.

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elktown2y ago

No, not at all. The only thing I did was to react on how ridiculous that oversimplification is and how such a thing can only come about due to an embarrassing amount of hubris currently going around our field with relation to "AI". It's a hand-wavy "Eh, how hard can it be?" comment to rationalize ML being a pathway to AGI.

lern_too_spelOP2y ago

There is nothing oversimplified in that description at all. Here is an equivalent description from a neuroscience textbook:

"Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system, the collection of nerve cells that interpret all sorts of information which allows the body to coordinate activity in response to the environment."

https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/introneuroscience1/chapter/wha...

This is even simpler than the RL agent description of the brain that visagra provided earlier, ignoring that the brain must have some internal state instead of being a pure function from each input to each response. Would you say that neuroscientists have even more hubris?

elktown2y ago

Yet again you just pick out a word, "oversimplified" in this case, ignores the rest of the reply - and more importantly, the entire context of all these replies - and goes on to make a nonsensical comparison with the ever-present one-liner that all textbooks of all academic disciplines have.

Have you not understood by now that my critic of our field's AI-hubris is a general one - and thus not hinged on exact wordings? I could've written similar hubris related replies on multiple other comments in this thread. It's my reaction. It's my exasperation.

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elktown2y ago

lern_too_spelOP2y ago

There is nothing oversimplified in that description at all. Here is an equivalent description from a neuroscience textbook:

"Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system, the collection of nerve cells that interpret all sorts of information which allows the body to coordinate activity in response to the environment."

https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/introneuroscience1/chapter/wha...

elktown2y ago

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