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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
by 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 agoPeople 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 agoPlease 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.