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> You can't compute the trajectory of a thrown baseball using only a single transistor. I wouldn't be so sure about that. You can catch a ball by keeping a con
by gwern 6y ago
> You can't compute the trajectory of a thrown baseball using only a single transistor.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. You can catch a ball by keeping a constant angle. That seems like something a one-parameter model or PID may be able to do. Dragonflies catch evading prey using just 16 neurons: https://www.pnas.org/content/110/2/696.full https://www.pnas.org/content/110/2/696.full You may need a lot of neurons to learn something, but the found solutions may be quite small... Something to think about.
- causality0 6y agoDragonflies visually track prey using only sixteen neurons. That's a testament to how complex a single neuron is, not how easy the task is. Dragonfly eyes each have thousands of facets and sensory cells. How many transistors would we need to process that input, in multiple colors, and identify and track prey in real time? It's a heck of a lot more than sixteen.