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From the article, a quote that is enlightening: if I asked, ‘Do you understand New York City?’ you would probably respond, ‘What do you mean?’ There’s all this
by SubiculumCode 7y ago
From the article, a quote that is enlightening:
if I asked, ‘Do you understand New York City?’ you would probably respond, ‘What do you mean?’ There’s all this complexity. If you can’t understand New York City, it’s not because you can’t get access to the data. It’s just there’s so much going on at the same time. That’s what a human brain is. It’s millions of things happening simultaneously among different types of cells, neuromodulators, genetic components, things from the outside. There’s no point when you can suddenly say, ‘I now understand the brain,’ just as you wouldn’t say, ‘I now get New York City.’ ”
- randcraw 7y agoTrue, but the equating of a brain with a city is largely specious, especially when trying to understand cognition. Yes a brain regulates many low level parasympathetic processes. But it's the decision making and memory systems that we most want to understand and replicate in silico. And the coordination of a city of mostly independent self-interested humans is a poor analogue for the biological bases for a coherent thought process, unless it's only the medulla or pons that we hope to model.