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Usually the comment sections here are pretty fun to read but anything neuroscience related results in absolute cringe-inducing comment chains. This one is no ex

Usually the comment sections here are pretty fun to read but anything neuroscience related results in absolute cringe-inducing comment chains. This one is no exception.

parpfish 3y ago
The vibe I usually get for HN neuro stuff is “The brain is just a computer and we know how those work, so what’s the big deal”
- neuronerdgirl 3y ago
  HN has a lot of people who are quite smart but have not been through graduate school or academia, so they don't realize just how niche the type of training and topic-specific knowledge you get in that world is relative to a classic university-to-industry track. I think that is true for the general populace too - it takes doing the depth of learning and research you have to do for a PhD to realize just how much there is to be known about even the narrowest slice of a topic even relative to the most intense casual enthusiasts. I suspect this is a major reason for the high levels of impostor syndrome seen in academia, but that is a tangent. Neuroscience is also a field that mostly happens within academia, unlike something like computer science where a ton of work legitimately is being done at the types of companies many HN users work at, so where you can indeed get something approaching expert-level knowledge on the job in some cases in the latter, almost no one on the forum has enough exposure to be an expert in the former. Couple that with the previous thesis and you end up with a bunch of people who don't know what they don't know (I will not be engaging on Dunning Kruger in this thread). That plus, perhaps, a bit of hubris and you're gonna get a wonky comment section.
- godelski 3y ago
  I think the brain is a computer. But I don't know how "computers" work nor do I know how brains work. (I do know a fair bit about the types of computers we are talking to one another and that host HN, but a computing machine is more than that) In fact, that's what got me into ML in the first place. What a crazy computer, that we've been studying it for thousands of years but still so much remains a mystery. How even extremely basic questions have baffled us for centuries. We still stumble over the nature of consciousness, sentience, and sapience. We still can't even agree on the definitions of these things! And by computer, I mean that there is a mechanistic process. One that is void of magic and beholden to the laws of physics. Which means, we should be able to replicate it. But this is also true for planets, galaxies, and so much more. So that does not mean it is within our capacity now or anywhere in the near future.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Gooblebrai 3y ago
    I'm always wary of thinking that our metaphors for the brain represent the real object. History shows that we tend to use as metaphor whatever popular technology is in place at the time. Right now is neural networks. Before, computers, telegraphs, hydraulic systems and so on. I could easily imagine the next analogy being quantum computers. Or whatever trending technology comes around 2030.
    - godelski 3y ago
      Metaphors are aids. The problem is to take metaphors literally. It is, ironically, over-fitting the meaning of words. But words only mean what we mean them to mean. In the language of ML, you can say that -- analogously or metaphorically -- language is kinda like a VAE. You encode your thoughts, put them into a compressed version that is then passed to another independent network which must decode this encoding and hope you got it all right. While far from accurate, it is useful and can help us remember that the goal is not to interpret the words, but what was attempted to be encoded in the first place. That said, a computer is a very vague term. I think if you strictly mean the device we are typing to one another on or the thing that transmits the signals between our machines, you have overfit. Even with how the word itself has historically been used as well as even used today. A person can be called a computer as well as a physical slide ruler. It is simply a machine that can calculate, which is absolutely another vague term. In fact, if the universe is completely mechanistic, we could frame it as a computer (but do not confuse this with all that simulation stuff, that's a misunderstanding of what a universe as a simulation actually means). FWIW, Roger Penrose for quite some time been making the connection of a brain to a quantum computer. The problem with that is we aren't exactly seeing quantum processes in the way we'd expect (though there are clearly some quantum processes). It gets nuanced, but it's a rabbit hole that sounds like you'll enjoy going down.
AlexeyBelov 3y ago
This is your only comment in this thread. I hoped to see you debunking.. uh.. bunk. Can you at least elaborate on comments you feel are completely wrong and "cringe"?

Usually the comment sections here are pretty fun to read but anything neuroscience related results in absolute cringe-inducing comment chains. This one is no exception.

parpfish 3y ago

The vibe I usually get for HN neuro stuff is “The brain is just a computer and we know how those work, so what’s the big deal”

neuronerdgirl 3y ago
HN has a lot of people who are quite smart but have not been through graduate school or academia, so they don't realize just how niche the type of training and topic-specific knowledge you get in that world is relative to a classic university-to-industry track. I think that is true for the general populace too - it takes doing the depth of learning and research you have to do for a PhD to realize just how much there is to be known about even the narrowest slice of a topic even relative to the most intense casual enthusiasts. I suspect this is a major reason for the high levels of impostor syndrome seen in academia, but that is a tangent. Neuroscience is also a field that mostly happens within academia, unlike something like computer science where a ton of work legitimately is being done at the types of companies many HN users work at, so where you can indeed get something approaching expert-level knowledge on the job in some cases in the latter, almost no one on the forum has enough exposure to be an expert in the former. Couple that with the previous thesis and you end up with a bunch of people who don't know what they don't know (I will not be engaging on Dunning Kruger in this thread). That plus, perhaps, a bit of hubris and you're gonna get a wonky comment section.
godelski 3y ago
I think the brain is a computer. But I don't know how "computers" work nor do I know how brains work. (I do know a fair bit about the types of computers we are talking to one another and that host HN, but a computing machine is more than that) In fact, that's what got me into ML in the first place. What a crazy computer, that we've been studying it for thousands of years but still so much remains a mystery. How even extremely basic questions have baffled us for centuries. We still stumble over the nature of consciousness, sentience, and sapience. We still can't even agree on the definitions of these things! And by computer, I mean that there is a mechanistic process. One that is void of magic and beholden to the laws of physics. Which means, we should be able to replicate it. But this is also true for planets, galaxies, and so much more. So that does not mean it is within our capacity now or anywhere in the near future.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Gooblebrai 3y ago
  I'm always wary of thinking that our metaphors for the brain represent the real object. History shows that we tend to use as metaphor whatever popular technology is in place at the time. Right now is neural networks. Before, computers, telegraphs, hydraulic systems and so on. I could easily imagine the next analogy being quantum computers. Or whatever trending technology comes around 2030.
  - godelski 3y ago
    Metaphors are aids. The problem is to take metaphors literally. It is, ironically, over-fitting the meaning of words. But words only mean what we mean them to mean. In the language of ML, you can say that -- analogously or metaphorically -- language is kinda like a VAE. You encode your thoughts, put them into a compressed version that is then passed to another independent network which must decode this encoding and hope you got it all right. While far from accurate, it is useful and can help us remember that the goal is not to interpret the words, but what was attempted to be encoded in the first place. That said, a computer is a very vague term. I think if you strictly mean the device we are typing to one another on or the thing that transmits the signals between our machines, you have overfit. Even with how the word itself has historically been used as well as even used today. A person can be called a computer as well as a physical slide ruler. It is simply a machine that can calculate, which is absolutely another vague term. In fact, if the universe is completely mechanistic, we could frame it as a computer (but do not confuse this with all that simulation stuff, that's a misunderstanding of what a universe as a simulation actually means). FWIW, Roger Penrose for quite some time been making the connection of a brain to a quantum computer. The problem with that is we aren't exactly seeing quantum processes in the way we'd expect (though there are clearly some quantum processes). It gets nuanced, but it's a rabbit hole that sounds like you'll enjoy going down.

AlexeyBelov 3y ago

This is your only comment in this thread. I hoped to see you debunking.. uh.. bunk. Can you at least elaborate on comments you feel are completely wrong and "cringe"?