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At least one self-avowed professional connectionist here. I was coming to make similar critique here. Connectionism isn't and never was about trying to simulat

At least one self-avowed professional connectionist here. I was coming to make similar critique here. Connectionism isn't and never was about trying to simulate the biological neural networks and other anatomy. As you said, it's about emphasizing the network and network emergent phenomena over isolated pieces (e.g. "grandmother neurons" or strict localization of brain function). At the information processing level the contrast is to classicism/symbolicism that tries to explain cognition as atomic and modular operations on symbols.

bbor 3y ago
Good to hear from one, thanks! My big insight when I first started really getting into ai was “we should unite the two camps now!”, only to find out we’ve basically been doing that since the 90s. So I'm glad the debate survives a bit to this day! Honestly, after 2023 I think we’re all connectionist in a way lol, except for the old guard, of which Chomsky might be the only (adjacent) one left. Godspeed to Chomsky, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he has one last scientific revolution left in him