3 ms·

You're not technically wrong, but I think this is a bit pedantic. Most people realize this. Convolutional networks don't actually seem to be a totally bad appro

You're not technically wrong, but I think this is a bit pedantic. Most people realize this. Convolutional networks don't actually seem to be a totally bad approximation of feedforward visual processes in the brain at a computational level. And I say this as a neuroscientist.

argonaut 10y ago
Most people don't realize this. Most people will just read popular science articles in the media. They will never read discussions on HN/Reddit/Twitter.
- bitCromwell 10y ago
  which is precisely why analogies are helpful in communicating with them.
  - argonaut 10y ago
    Which is precisely why false analogies are not helpful.
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
>> Convolutional networks don't actually seem to be a totally bad approximation of feedforward visual processes in the brain at a computational level. And I say this as a neuroscientist. I'm saying that a "(not) totally bad approximation" can still be bad enough that it's completely useless. And even a good one can. The problem is that you can model pretty much anything with an analogy that's broad enough. Say, you can model any distribution with a straight line... except you will often not learn anything you didn't know before. Or maybe you'll learn a lot about a whole class of distributions, but not about a specific distribution, or how it differs from all the others in its class. If you've read Foucault's Pendulum- it basically makes this point about the Tree of Life [1]. They're always "fitting" it to everything from pinball machines, to cars, to peoples' sex organs. And it always fits so well! Maybe that's because it's truly divine? Come to that- why are ANNs based "on the brain" and not the Tree of Life? They sure look a lot like it, superficially. Maybe ANNs are really based on the Mystic Qabbalah, Geoff Hinton is a Rosicrucian and it's all a scheme of the Illuminati. CNNs are probably a model of The Eye on the Pyramid. It all fits, innit! That way lies madness- or at least a whole big bunch of confusion and waste of time. You mentioned computation- look at Turing machines for a good model of a thing. It's an analogy that's broad enough to represent a whole class of computational devices, yet at the same time it only represents those devices and nothing else. You can't mistake a Turing machine for a potato, or a cricket, fnord what have you. Why can't we have that sort of thing, instead of "Neural Networks"? ____________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life#Kabbalah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life#Kabbalah
- egocodedinsol 10y ago
  Can you name something that's a better approximation to the brain's computational processes than a neural network?

argonaut 10y ago

Most people don't realize this. Most people will just read popular science articles in the media. They will never read discussions on HN/Reddit/Twitter.

bitCromwell 10y ago
which is precisely why analogies are helpful in communicating with them.
- argonaut 10y ago
  Which is precisely why false analogies are not helpful.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

>> Convolutional networks don't actually seem to be a totally bad approximation of feedforward visual processes in the brain at a computational level. And I say this as a neuroscientist. I'm saying that a "(not) totally bad approximation" can still be bad enough that it's completely useless. And even a good one can. The problem is that you can model pretty much anything with an analogy that's broad enough. Say, you can model any distribution with a straight line... except you will often not learn anything you didn't know before. Or maybe you'll learn a lot about a whole class of distributions, but not about a specific distribution, or how it differs from all the others in its class. If you've read Foucault's Pendulum- it basically makes this point about the Tree of Life [1]. They're always "fitting" it to everything from pinball machines, to cars, to peoples' sex organs. And it always fits so well! Maybe that's because it's truly divine? Come to that- why are ANNs based "on the brain" and not the Tree of Life? They sure look a lot like it, superficially. Maybe ANNs are really based on the Mystic Qabbalah, Geoff Hinton is a Rosicrucian and it's all a scheme of the Illuminati. CNNs are probably a model of The Eye on the Pyramid. It all fits, innit! That way lies madness- or at least a whole big bunch of confusion and waste of time. You mentioned computation- look at Turing machines for a good model of a thing. It's an analogy that's broad enough to represent a whole class of computational devices, yet at the same time it only represents those devices and nothing else. You can't mistake a Turing machine for a potato, or a cricket, fnord what have you. Why can't we have that sort of thing, instead of "Neural Networks"? ____________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life#Kabbalah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life#Kabbalah

egocodedinsol 10y ago
Can you name something that's a better approximation to the brain's computational processes than a neural network?