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Feynman wasn't a neurobiologist. I'd read Spontaneous Brain by Northoff (Copernican, irreducible neuroscience) or oscillatory neurobiology Buzsaki. The brain
by mallowdram 1y ago
Feynman wasn't a neurobiologist.
I'd read Spontaneous Brain by Northoff (Copernican, irreducible neuroscience) or oscillatory neurobiology Buzsaki.
The brain is lossless.
I would agree that external forms of memory are evolutionarily progressive, that ability to utilize the external forms requires a lossless relationship.
Once we grasp the infinitely inferior external of arbitrariness (symbols words) are correlated through superior, lossless, concatenated internals (action-neural-spatial-syntax), until we can externalize that direct perception, the externals are deeply inferior, lossy forms.
- wduquette 1y agoBut taking notes and writing ideas out requires that we think them through...which we usually don't do otherwise. This has been a commonplace of the intellectual life for centuries.
- barrenko 1y agoOr alternate "pen is mightier that the sword."
- mallowdram 1y agoWords and thoughts are wholly separate. Notes aren't the direct results of perception, they are more like sportscasters reading the mind of pitchers. Notes point to thoughts or observations, they aren't the thoughts themselves. “We refute (based on empirical evidence) claims that humans use linguistic representations to think.” Ev Fedorenko Language Lab MIT 2024
- wduquette 1y agoI did not say that my brain uses linguistic representations internally when I think; I said that the process of turning my ideas into words helps me think.
- mallowdram 1y agoActually you said "writing ideas out requires that we think them through" and this isn't what's happening in brains. In actuality, words interfere with our ability to think.
- nathan_compton 1y ago"The brain is lossless." Nothing is lossless.
- mallowdram 1y agoFourier transforms are lossless. If it entered the oscillations of senses, it's still there in your brain. You may never need it, but every action is detailed by difference.
- svnt 1y agoMath is models, not reality
- 8note 1y agofourier transforms are lossless, but what impleemntation are you refering to that losslessly implements a fourier transform? to my knowledge practical fourier transforms set a number of sine waves they will calculate for, and a window of time to look at. these limitations result in loss. but, just taking the brain, at some point the person will die and decompose. how are you gonna get the oscillations back out of the rotted flesh? there has to be some form of loss to the brain
- mallowdram 1y agoWe only need brains when we're alive, so extracting the points isn't required. In terms of brains, the math is used to model the irreducible occurrences in brains - that everything is still in there. So the math only gives us a window into the complexity. Brains don't compute or calculate necessarily. As an analog, or analoga of differences, it never has to exclude, or experience loss. For the details: Rhythms of the Brain or Unlocking the Brain both volumes.
- nathan_compton 1y agoA Fourier transform is just a change of coordinates. It has nothing to do with the signal per se. If you have a signal which was measured or recorded with finite precision (as any signal must be) then the fourier transform (as a pure mathematical object) simply preserves the same amount of loss that the original signal had. But, in fact, to do that, we would need to do the transform on hardware that could represent real numbers. This hardware does not exist in computers or in your brain, and so a fourier transform is lossy in that case. Still, the idea that your brain encodes all information in oscillations is not accurate - your temporary electrical activity can be substantially disrupted without you losing your memories, suggesting very strongly (to put it mildly) that some of your memories are encoded chemically and physically in changes to the connectivity between neurons that do not depend on persistent electrical activity. That encoding scheme must be lossy.
- mrguyorama 1y agoPopsci books tend to be horseshit. Reading one does not make YOU a neurobiologist.
- mallowdram 1y agoThey're not popsci books. I'm a co-lead developer on a project with neurobio consultants, so I better know wtf they're talking about.
- thunderfork 1y ago[dead]