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This paper inspired another fun followup: "Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?" [0] The authors investigated a 6502 running Atari games using po
by aesthesia 5y ago
This paper inspired another fun followup: "Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?" [0] The authors investigated a 6502 running Atari games using popular neuroscience methods, finding things like transistors that are uniquely necessary to run Space Invaders, but, of course, never getting close to an actual understanding of how the processor functions. It really highlights how even with the huge amounts of data we are able to get from biological systems now, there's still a lot of information we paradigmatically can't understand.
[0]: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005268 https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo...
- netizen-936824 5y agoThis is a really good paper, I've gone over it a few times. Highly recommended.
- saurik 5y agoBut... clearly in the case of Space Invaders, we can understand it as we built it. The lesson I would think you should learn from that argument path is that techniques and mental models matter, and that the "popular neuroscience methods" should be re-analyzed and potentially discarded outright.
- uryga 5y agothat's GP's (and the linked paper's) point :) "paradigmatically can't understand" = "can't figure out using current methods", so pretty much what you're saying
- tzs 5y agoI can imagine a whole series of quite amusing articles of that form, but it would probably not be a good idea to take it too far. When it got to "Could a Particle Physicist Understand Birds?" and ended up with the physicist building and using a Large Heron Collider people would probably get rather upset.