Nobel prizes awarded for "brain's gps"

Discussion in 'Intelligence & Machines' started by danshawen, Oct 7, 2014.

  1. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29504761

    The Washington Post here also carried an article on this subject today, and included an interesting and telling passage:

    "it tells us not only how the brain understands space, but how it organizes complex cognitive processes."

    The significance of their work has been compared to the mapping of the human genome earlier this century. I would agree with that assessment.

    Ever since reading Jeff Hawkin's 2005 book 'On Intelligence', I have been hawking the view that the most fundamental sensory input as well as organizing principle for the human mind is that of length, or equivalently time (because time also corresponds to a length, cognitively speaking). Contrast this to the symbolic logic AI camp's determination to craft a similar engine based on numbers (like the computer you are using). I think this is unnatural, and for the same reason Tesla invented most of the technology for AC electric power generation and distribution. Any thinking machine that rivals our own based on numbers and mathematical logic is bound to hit a brick wall in terms of Godel's incompleteness theorem, and that's just for starters. What do you think (TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION)?

    I became interested in such ideas while working with a young and brilliant team of roboticists in the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005, the first such race that had any winners. It paved the way for military contracts to be awarded for autonomous vehicles which also included a lot of development work for predator drones. Our entry, DEXTER, went 81 miles in the Mojave desert autonomously (using GPS) before getting a flat tire.

    The connection is even deeper than the work associated with this Nobel would suggest. Our greatest thinkers (Newton, Einstein) dealt only with the concept of lengths, and they did so without having the slightest idea of what the concept actually means, in the same manner that a machine that is based on symbolic logic would have no clue as to what a number actually is. If your own mind isn't feeling a little puny at the thought of this, it probably should. Fortunately, there are ample means for finite minds such as ours to cope with the idea of such profound limitations.
     
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  3. Jake Arave Ethologist Registered Senior Member

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    I need to do more research into this topic, but thus far I find it extremely interesting.
     
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  5. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    As you both are interested in how the brain works you may find interesting (if have not yet read it):
    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=905778&postcount=66 where I explain and justify my RTS view of perception with focus on showing genuine free will is not necessarily inconsistent with the natural laws that control the firing of every nerve in your body. Then see:

    http://www.sciforums.com/threads/wh...e-will-an-illusion.104623/page-5#post-2644660 and posts 84,86 & 94 where I clarify my POV more.

    I.e. I think the accepted by cognitive science* POV of how we perceive a 3D world "out there" is not only wrong, but is just "hand waving" as "emerges" is telling nothing of the brain's neural processes.

    My original paper that post 66 above is based on told how the 2D continuous field of retinal stimulation is parsed into objects by know characteristic of neurons and also at that neural level how the neurons achieve the Gestalt law of "good continuation" - I.e. perceive a unified cat walking behind a picket fence, etc. (not vertical "strips of cat" image falling on our retina).
     
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  7. Jake Arave Ethologist Registered Senior Member

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    Thanks for the links Billy, I will look into them when I have some time off.

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  8. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    The 'phantom limb' box was featured on an episode of 'House' I enjoyed very much. Makes sense.
     
  9. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, the retina of the eye is a marvel of neurosensory integration. It has to be. If visual information regarding the proximity or movements of predator(s) needed to wait until an image could be transferred by the optic nerve to the visual cortex, you would likely wind up as something's next meal. Relentless predation over eons teaches survival the hard way. It's also why our brains evolved to be quick studies for face recognition. Some of those predators were of our own species.

    This neurosensory pattern of integration is repeated many times in our neurophysiology for our various senses. However, most of what our senses respond to are lengths, more or less. Wavelengths of light, and of sound, physical characteristics of molecules related to how they are shaped are obvious examples. And we do all of this without understanding fundamentally what a length actually is. Same as with a computer based AI trying to explain or understand what a number is.

    Working with lengths rather than numbers assures no halting problems, infinities. or niggling theorems with proofs lying outside the domains of systems of symbolic logic to confound us the way an artificial intelligence based on mathematical symbology would inevitably encounter. The behaviorist (non-symbolic) approach to AI cannot fail to produce patterns of cognition and behaviors much closer to the way our own brains work.
     

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