12 ms·

I was never satisfied with their explanation for why they had to start with the human brain rather than the brain of a MUCH simpler organism like C. elegans.

gohrt 11y ago
The reason was obviously hubris combined with marketing spice appeal. http://nemaload.davidad.org/ http://nemaload.davidad.org/
- streptomycin 11y ago
  Interesting link, but no update since 2013? Is it dead? There's also http://www.openworm.org/ http://www.openworm.org/
  - plonh 11y ago
    It was Dalrymple's site. His work was open source and collaborated with OpenWorm researchers. Looks like Dalrymple gave up to go work for Twitter. I guess he found a way to leverage his expertise in studying very small brains. Sigh. Greatest minds of our generation, yadda yadda. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dalrymple_(computer_scientist) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dalrymple_(computer_sc...
themgt 11y ago
Exactly. So much of neuroscience is still in "unknown unknown" phase, and the idea of just doing this massive interdisciplinary project to simulate a full human brain, built on the pile of sand that is any sort of "theory" of full-brain simulation ... it's like dedicating $1 billion to some dude's unpublished idea of proving P = NP. Bullshit should have been called before this ever got off the drawing board. Sure seems like the EU has it's fair share of incompetent technocrats if you can throw $1 billion at some nonsense any handful of PhDs in the field could have told you was nonsense if you'd just picked up a phone.
- evgen 11y ago
  Sure seems like the EU has it's fair share of incompetent technocrats if you can throw $1 billion at some nonsense any handful of PhDs in the field could have told you was nonsense if you'd just picked up a phone. Sounds like most VC firms nowadays.
- wpietri 11y ago
  > any handful of PhDs in the field could have told you was nonsense The problem with groundbreaking work is often that any handful of experts can tell you that it's nonsense. E.g., look at the reception that Barry Marshall got when he proposed that stomach ulcers were caused by bacterial infection. [1] All the experts "knew" it was caused by "stress, spicy foods, and too much acid" in the stomach. Eventually he got the Nobel prize, but you have to wonder what else we're missing out because whoever discovered it wasn't as dogged or as lucky as Marshall. [1] http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/mar1int-1 http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/mar1int-1
  - apl 11y ago
    Examples of this type are not a good guideline for policy decisions, almost by definition. For every Marshall, there's a million cranks whose ideas are rejected by the establishment and rightfully so. At the outset, all these ideas appear equally wild. But resources are scarce -- we can't just fund everything. So what to do with a billion Euros? Obviously, we shouldn't put everything in a single pot. Particularly not in one crazy pot. That's why people complain about Markram's ego trip and enabling politicians. If you got a certain amount of funding, diversify: fund a couple of cranks, sure, but 90% should go toward what's often called normal science where small steps add up to comparatively predictable progress. (In Markram's/the HBP's defence: Ultimately, the project will yield a metric tonne of normal science, especially in terms of infrastructure etc. However, everybody will be disappointed at the end...)
    - wpietri 11y ago
      I think examples like Marshall can't be the only guideline for policy. But they are excellent examples for policy. Marshall made lives better for millions of people. Anybody responsible for science funding should be keenly aware that the machine they steer is much better at responding to obvious failures like Markram than silent failures that ulcer treatment was for decades.
Animats 11y ago
Exactly. OpenWorm [1] is trying to do exactly that, emulate C. elegans, with all of 302 neurons. It doesn't work yet, but they;'re plugging along. When that problem is totally solved, and the neural model is working right, it's time to move up in complexity. Probably to lizards or birds. About two decades ago, I heard Rod Brooks talking about building a human brain. He'd done some good artificial insects and was big on purely reactive AI. At the time, he was promoting Cog [2], as a way to get to human-level AI in one big jump. I asked "You've done an insect brain. Why not try to get to a mouse brain next?". He replied "I don't want to go down in history as the man who created the world's greatest robot mouse." 20 years later, Brooks doesn't even have mouse-level AI, although he does have a robotic vacuum cleaner company. A mouse has about 1g of brain mass; a human has about 1000g. But they're both mammals, with about 90% similar DNA. If someone could simulate a mouse at the neural simulation level, that would be real progress. Once you have a mouse simulation, human level is a scaling problem. The Human Brain Project blew through a billion dollars in funding while OpenWorm is a volunteer effort. That's the real problem. [1] http://www.openworm.org/ http://www.openworm.org/ [2] http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/cog/cog.html http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/cog/c...
- noselfrighteous 11y ago
  It's not clear at all that Mouse->Human is simply a scaling problem. It would appear that there is some emergent phenomenon (consciousness) somewhere on the scale between mouse and human. This phenomenon may be triggered by a surplus of "computational resource" with respect to "body to be controlled", which I personally think is unlikely. It may be triggered by a matching of computational resource to controllable complexity, i.e. the hands and fingers -> tool use, who knows? There is so much we don't know about cognition. For example, are Whales/Dolphins self aware/conscious? They have the requisite brain mass, if it's simply a scaling problem.
  - marvy 11y ago
    What makes you so sure mice aren't conscious? Insects probably are not, I have no strong opinion on mice, but dolphins almost definitely are.
Houshalter 11y ago
Because it's unlikely that C. elegans can't even learn. It doesn't have any brain structures equivalent to ones in humans. It's neurons work totally differently. They are so different from us that anything we learn probably wouldn't apply to human brains. A more intelligent animal, ideally a mammal, would be a much better choice.
- foobarian 11y ago
  The thing I was always wondering about brain simulations is how to determine what level of detail is enough. What if neurons evolved to take advantage of some funny quantum phenomena that we may not even know about yet, and without this the simulation won't work? For this reason I would think that getting a simple brain simulation to work would at least help enumerate the physics most involved in their function. Now maybe there is some extra physics that comes into play at scale (like some quantum-computery effect with human-size brains that induces conciousness) but maybe this would be detectable as small discrepancies in the small simulations (especially as they progress in size to e.g. mice).
  - sanxiyn 11y ago
    Since brain has to work in a noisy environment, it is unlikely its function depends too much on details. Neurons can't depend on effects we don't know about, because if effect is large, we would know about it, and if effect is small, brain has to work with noise that size, so it is not necessary for us to get it right for its function. (It's a different matter for its exact output, but that's for later.)
  - orbifold 11y ago
    If there would be such a quantum effect it would contradict a lot of conventional theoretical physics, brains operate at high temperatures ~310 Kelvin, and the length scales involved are fairly large for quantum mechanics. You would only expect to see quantum effects at such large length scales at very low temperatures, because otherwise the correlation length is just too small.
  - dhj 11y ago

gohrt 11y ago

The reason was obviously hubris combined with marketing spice appeal. http://nemaload.davidad.org/ http://nemaload.davidad.org/

streptomycin 11y ago
Interesting link, but no update since 2013? Is it dead? There's also http://www.openworm.org/ http://www.openworm.org/
- plonh 11y ago
  It was Dalrymple's site. His work was open source and collaborated with OpenWorm researchers. Looks like Dalrymple gave up to go work for Twitter. I guess he found a way to leverage his expertise in studying very small brains. Sigh. Greatest minds of our generation, yadda yadda. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dalrymple_(computer_scientist) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dalrymple_(computer_sc...

themgt 11y ago

Exactly. So much of neuroscience is still in "unknown unknown" phase, and the idea of just doing this massive interdisciplinary project to simulate a full human brain, built on the pile of sand that is any sort of "theory" of full-brain simulation ... it's like dedicating $1 billion to some dude's unpublished idea of proving P = NP. Bullshit should have been called before this ever got off the drawing board. Sure seems like the EU has it's fair share of incompetent technocrats if you can throw $1 billion at some nonsense any handful of PhDs in the field could have told you was nonsense if you'd just picked up a phone.

evgen 11y ago
Sure seems like the EU has it's fair share of incompetent technocrats if you can throw $1 billion at some nonsense any handful of PhDs in the field could have told you was nonsense if you'd just picked up a phone. Sounds like most VC firms nowadays.
wpietri 11y ago
> any handful of PhDs in the field could have told you was nonsense The problem with groundbreaking work is often that any handful of experts can tell you that it's nonsense. E.g., look at the reception that Barry Marshall got when he proposed that stomach ulcers were caused by bacterial infection. [1] All the experts "knew" it was caused by "stress, spicy foods, and too much acid" in the stomach. Eventually he got the Nobel prize, but you have to wonder what else we're missing out because whoever discovered it wasn't as dogged or as lucky as Marshall. [1] http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/mar1int-1 http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/mar1int-1
- apl 11y ago
  Examples of this type are not a good guideline for policy decisions, almost by definition. For every Marshall, there's a million cranks whose ideas are rejected by the establishment and rightfully so. At the outset, all these ideas appear equally wild. But resources are scarce -- we can't just fund everything. So what to do with a billion Euros? Obviously, we shouldn't put everything in a single pot. Particularly not in one crazy pot. That's why people complain about Markram's ego trip and enabling politicians. If you got a certain amount of funding, diversify: fund a couple of cranks, sure, but 90% should go toward what's often called normal science where small steps add up to comparatively predictable progress. (In Markram's/the HBP's defence: Ultimately, the project will yield a metric tonne of normal science, especially in terms of infrastructure etc. However, everybody will be disappointed at the end...)
  - wpietri 11y ago
    I think examples like Marshall can't be the only guideline for policy. But they are excellent examples for policy. Marshall made lives better for millions of people. Anybody responsible for science funding should be keenly aware that the machine they steer is much better at responding to obvious failures like Markram than silent failures that ulcer treatment was for decades.

Animats 11y ago

Exactly. OpenWorm [1] is trying to do exactly that, emulate C. elegans, with all of 302 neurons. It doesn't work yet, but they;'re plugging along. When that problem is totally solved, and the neural model is working right, it's time to move up in complexity. Probably to lizards or birds. About two decades ago, I heard Rod Brooks talking about building a human brain. He'd done some good artificial insects and was big on purely reactive AI. At the time, he was promoting Cog [2], as a way to get to human-level AI in one big jump. I asked "You've done an insect brain. Why not try to get to a mouse brain next?". He replied "I don't want to go down in history as the man who created the world's greatest robot mouse." 20 years later, Brooks doesn't even have mouse-level AI, although he does have a robotic vacuum cleaner company. A mouse has about 1g of brain mass; a human has about 1000g. But they're both mammals, with about 90% similar DNA. If someone could simulate a mouse at the neural simulation level, that would be real progress. Once you have a mouse simulation, human level is a scaling problem. The Human Brain Project blew through a billion dollars in funding while OpenWorm is a volunteer effort. That's the real problem. [1] http://www.openworm.org/ http://www.openworm.org/ [2] http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/cog/cog.html http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/cog/c...

noselfrighteous 11y ago
It's not clear at all that Mouse->Human is simply a scaling problem. It would appear that there is some emergent phenomenon (consciousness) somewhere on the scale between mouse and human. This phenomenon may be triggered by a surplus of "computational resource" with respect to "body to be controlled", which I personally think is unlikely. It may be triggered by a matching of computational resource to controllable complexity, i.e. the hands and fingers -> tool use, who knows? There is so much we don't know about cognition. For example, are Whales/Dolphins self aware/conscious? They have the requisite brain mass, if it's simply a scaling problem.
- marvy 11y ago
  What makes you so sure mice aren't conscious? Insects probably are not, I have no strong opinion on mice, but dolphins almost definitely are.

Houshalter 11y ago

Because it's unlikely that C. elegans can't even learn. It doesn't have any brain structures equivalent to ones in humans. It's neurons work totally differently. They are so different from us that anything we learn probably wouldn't apply to human brains. A more intelligent animal, ideally a mammal, would be a much better choice.

foobarian 11y ago
The thing I was always wondering about brain simulations is how to determine what level of detail is enough. What if neurons evolved to take advantage of some funny quantum phenomena that we may not even know about yet, and without this the simulation won't work? For this reason I would think that getting a simple brain simulation to work would at least help enumerate the physics most involved in their function. Now maybe there is some extra physics that comes into play at scale (like some quantum-computery effect with human-size brains that induces conciousness) but maybe this would be detectable as small discrepancies in the small simulations (especially as they progress in size to e.g. mice).
- sanxiyn 11y ago
  Since brain has to work in a noisy environment, it is unlikely its function depends too much on details. Neurons can't depend on effects we don't know about, because if effect is large, we would know about it, and if effect is small, brain has to work with noise that size, so it is not necessary for us to get it right for its function. (It's a different matter for its exact output, but that's for later.)
- orbifold 11y ago
  If there would be such a quantum effect it would contradict a lot of conventional theoretical physics, brains operate at high temperatures ~310 Kelvin, and the length scales involved are fairly large for quantum mechanics. You would only expect to see quantum effects at such large length scales at very low temperatures, because otherwise the correlation length is just too small.
- dhj 11y ago