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This is one of the worst straw man arguments I have ever seen. The author makes broad generalizations with no attempt at understanding, and then goes on to make

by jnmd 9y ago

This is one of the worst straw man arguments I have ever seen. The author makes broad generalizations with no attempt at understanding, and then goes on to make completely ridiculous claims. Honestly made me sick to my stomach to read.

User23 9y ago
It sounds like your beliefs on the subject rest primarily on an emotional basis.
s3nnyy 9y ago
Can you specify? I thought the article was rather good because it resembled mistakes made by geeks for centuries: Thinking of people like machines.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  Is it a mistake though to think of people as machines? Our muscles and joints and bones and tendons and stuff that move us around, even though biological in origin is very much a mechanical machine. noun: an apparatus using or applying mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task. I don't get why would we suppose our cognitive functions to be any more than the result of physical phenomenon at some level. Especially when we know a little bit about the specifics (i.e drugs, brain surgery etc.). Just because a machine is complicated or of personal interest doesn't make it any less a machine so I'm not sure this is a mistake. Perhaps thinking the machine is simple enough to understand or that a frame of reference for objective understanding is possible may be mistakes though.
  - placebo 9y ago
    >Is it a mistake though to think of people as machines? Yes and no... It is not a mistake because much (and perhaps eventually all) of observable human functionality and behavior can be logically explained and therefore eventually simulated. However, when logic becomes one's "Maslow's hammer" then of course not only are people machines but all of existence is just a giant machine. It's an easy mistake to make because we tend to conflate a very powerful tool used by the mind to operate in reality with reality itself. I think humans are unique (at least on this planet) in their ability to ask this question, but also in their ability to discover that the answer is negative - i.e there is much more to reality than a complex "dead" machine.
- sn9 9y ago
  The author built a strawman by assuming people who use the metaphor of computation literally mean that the brain has a von Neumann architecture [0] or something similar. His definition of information is not the information theoretic definition, but one that is narrowly confined to his strawman. It's just an embarrassingly bad attempt at refutation. I can't imagine how someone of his stature could write something like this when he should be familiar with research like our understanding of how the visual and auditory systems work (literally processing information). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture
  - dilemma 9y ago
    People in technology use the machine metaphor for the human mind literally. See neural networks and even basic terms like Artificial Intelligence (there are no and have never been any intelligent machine or program). This certainly is not a strawman.
    - sn9 9y ago
      Please point me to a technologist who believes the brain to be a von Neumann architecture. The existence of misunderstandings by lay outsiders does not, in itself, invalidate the use of the metaphor, especially as it's used within the actual research community.
  - crispinb 9y ago
    > The author built a strawman by assuming people who use the metaphor of computation literally mean that the brain has a von Neumann architecture [0] or something similar. But I don't think his target is the neural-net style cognitive science that followed 70s-80s strong AI. It's contemporary neuroscience, which very frequently still models cognition as plain old symbol processing. There are thousands of fMRI-driven papers which do exactly this; neuroscientists still tend to work with a 20th century image of cognition (and a 19th century one of consciousness, but that's another story). This is not a straw man. It's alive and well and driving millions of dollars worth of research.
briga 9y ago
Exactly. I don't think there is any serious cognitive science who claims that the brain works EXACTLY like a computer. It doesn't and we have understood that for a long time. But it obviously processes information, or we wouldn't be able to interact with the world, or understand any of our sensory data. Has this author ever worked with neural networks? It is clear that NNs can store representations, and although they are not the same as data stored on a hard-drive, they are still representational.

by jnmd 9y ago

User23 9y ago

It sounds like your beliefs on the subject rest primarily on an emotional basis.

s3nnyy 9y ago

Can you specify? I thought the article was rather good because it resembled mistakes made by geeks for centuries: Thinking of people like machines.

mythrwy 9y ago
Is it a mistake though to think of people as machines? Our muscles and joints and bones and tendons and stuff that move us around, even though biological in origin is very much a mechanical machine. noun: an apparatus using or applying mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task. I don't get why would we suppose our cognitive functions to be any more than the result of physical phenomenon at some level. Especially when we know a little bit about the specifics (i.e drugs, brain surgery etc.). Just because a machine is complicated or of personal interest doesn't make it any less a machine so I'm not sure this is a mistake. Perhaps thinking the machine is simple enough to understand or that a frame of reference for objective understanding is possible may be mistakes though.
- placebo 9y ago
  >Is it a mistake though to think of people as machines? Yes and no... It is not a mistake because much (and perhaps eventually all) of observable human functionality and behavior can be logically explained and therefore eventually simulated. However, when logic becomes one's "Maslow's hammer" then of course not only are people machines but all of existence is just a giant machine. It's an easy mistake to make because we tend to conflate a very powerful tool used by the mind to operate in reality with reality itself. I think humans are unique (at least on this planet) in their ability to ask this question, but also in their ability to discover that the answer is negative - i.e there is much more to reality than a complex "dead" machine.
sn9 9y ago
The author built a strawman by assuming people who use the metaphor of computation literally mean that the brain has a von Neumann architecture [0] or something similar. His definition of information is not the information theoretic definition, but one that is narrowly confined to his strawman. It's just an embarrassingly bad attempt at refutation. I can't imagine how someone of his stature could write something like this when he should be familiar with research like our understanding of how the visual and auditory systems work (literally processing information). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture
- dilemma 9y ago
  People in technology use the machine metaphor for the human mind literally. See neural networks and even basic terms like Artificial Intelligence (there are no and have never been any intelligent machine or program). This certainly is not a strawman.
  - sn9 9y ago
    Please point me to a technologist who believes the brain to be a von Neumann architecture. The existence of misunderstandings by lay outsiders does not, in itself, invalidate the use of the metaphor, especially as it's used within the actual research community.
- crispinb 9y ago
  > The author built a strawman by assuming people who use the metaphor of computation literally mean that the brain has a von Neumann architecture [0] or something similar. But I don't think his target is the neural-net style cognitive science that followed 70s-80s strong AI. It's contemporary neuroscience, which very frequently still models cognition as plain old symbol processing. There are thousands of fMRI-driven papers which do exactly this; neuroscientists still tend to work with a 20th century image of cognition (and a 19th century one of consciousness, but that's another story). This is not a straw man. It's alive and well and driving millions of dollars worth of research.

briga 9y ago

Exactly. I don't think there is any serious cognitive science who claims that the brain works EXACTLY like a computer. It doesn't and we have understood that for a long time. But it obviously processes information, or we wouldn't be able to interact with the world, or understand any of our sensory data. Has this author ever worked with neural networks? It is clear that NNs can store representations, and although they are not the same as data stored on a hard-drive, they are still representational.