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“The brain has simply changed in an orderly way that now allows us to sing the song or recite the poem under certain conditions. When called on to perform, neit

“The brain has simply changed in an orderly way that now allows us to sing the song or recite the poem under certain conditions. When called on to perform, neither the song nor the poem is in any sense ‘retrieved’ from anywhere in the brain, any more than my finger movements are ‘retrieved’ when I tap my finger on my desk. We simply sing or recite – no retrieval necessary.” I actually like this as an idea that our tools for understanding brain functions are still too primitive and the traditional comment base compute models are lacking.

baddox 8y ago
I’m struggling with the definition of “retrieve” used here. According to the meanings of “retrieve” that I’m familiar with, I can’t conceive of any sense in which songs or finger movements aren’t retrieved by the brain.
- through_17 8y ago
  "I can’t conceive of any sense in which songs or finger movements aren’t retrieved by the brain." And that's the issue, isn't it? I think he's using "retrieve" to mean something much closer to what a digital computer does. Ie, there's a single "place" in the brain where the song is compressed and stored. My definition of "retrieve" (and yours, I think) is implicitly more relaxed; I say that a rough distributed system that reacts to stimuli like songs by being able to approximately reproduce them later counts as "retrieval." As other commenters have noted, the article uses a very restrictive definition of computation/retrieval. I mean, earlier in the article, he gives a definition of the same game that the "Lifelong Learning" and "Reinforcement Learning" people use. I think he's actually on the same page as many learning theorists, and is just trying to make it clear to a general audience that a very "tight" match between the brain and Von Neumann machines isn't reasonable.
  - baddox 8y ago
    Perhaps that’s what he meant, but does anyone even claim that that is the case?

baddox 8y ago

I’m struggling with the definition of “retrieve” used here. According to the meanings of “retrieve” that I’m familiar with, I can’t conceive of any sense in which songs or finger movements aren’t retrieved by the brain.

through_17 8y ago
"I can’t conceive of any sense in which songs or finger movements aren’t retrieved by the brain." And that's the issue, isn't it? I think he's using "retrieve" to mean something much closer to what a digital computer does. Ie, there's a single "place" in the brain where the song is compressed and stored. My definition of "retrieve" (and yours, I think) is implicitly more relaxed; I say that a rough distributed system that reacts to stimuli like songs by being able to approximately reproduce them later counts as "retrieval." As other commenters have noted, the article uses a very restrictive definition of computation/retrieval. I mean, earlier in the article, he gives a definition of the same game that the "Lifelong Learning" and "Reinforcement Learning" people use. I think he's actually on the same page as many learning theorists, and is just trying to make it clear to a general audience that a very "tight" match between the brain and Von Neumann machines isn't reasonable.
- baddox 8y ago
  Perhaps that’s what he meant, but does anyone even claim that that is the case?