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I thought the other conventional wisdom is that we get our theories by building mental models. I throw a ball, and I can either remember how it flew in the past

by ansible 13y ago

I thought the other conventional wisdom is that we get our theories by building mental models. I throw a ball, and I can either remember how it flew in the past and use that to predict, I can also built a mental model from first principles to find out what will happen. Maybe run a short 5 second idealized simulation in my head and I can predict what might happen. Well then I might realize that there was wind that my original model was too idealized. My current understanding of how sports skills are developed is closer to what you first said, than the bit about 'running a simulation'. The pro ball players have practised enough that they've seen the ball coming in at this angle, at that angle, and with this wind condition and that wind condition. And so they 'remember' where the ball is going to land, and they remember how to move to get there. Our brains are not, as far as I know, running any kind of recognizable simulation like we would with a computer.

rdtsc 13y ago
Interesting. I do visualize in my head how kinetic energy depletes as it goes higher and potential energy increases. It is like a bubble that shrinks. I see motion vectors and how they change. Other examples are a conflict between 3 people, kind of see a graph of relationships with different colored arrows and how they change.
- ansible 13y ago
  Interesting. I do visualize in my head how kinetic energy depletes as it goes higher and potential energy increases. It is like a bubble that shrinks. I see motion vectors and how they change. I do similar sorts of things... it is excellent that you have trained yourself to think that way. But for time critical tasks such as catching a fly ball, that doesn't work so well. We have lots of different processes we use for different situations.
nitrogen 13y ago
Our brains are not, as far as I know, running any kind of recognizable simulation like we would with a computer. By this logic, a professional ball player should miss any ball thrown at an unfamiliar angle, and amateurs should only be able to catch balls thrown to them at specific angles and velocities. It doesn't take much to build an integrator or differentiator out of electronics, so with [big number] neurons available to the task, I'd be surprised if we weren't running some kind of predictive analog simulation. And so they 'remember' where the ball is going to land, and they remember how to move to get there. Do you have a mechanism in mind for how this 'remembering' takes place, if not via simulation encoded by DNA marked, proteins folded, and/or synapses grown in response to successes and failures over time?
robotresearcher 13y ago
"Our brains are not, as far as I know, running any kind of recognizable simulation like we would with a computer." One way to implement the 'remembering' of the ball position is to run a forward model of the trajectory in your head. Your brain has specialized hardware for running forward models (short-term simulations) of physical systems. You need these to control your body precisely in the face of delays in the feedback from your limbs. A nice story - it's a just-so story, but a nice one - is that we repurpose this simulation hardware to simulate systems we observe outside our bodies. Expert ball-catchers have a very good simulation, beginners have a bad one. If you're already an expert, you can get even better by running your simulation off-line: this may be why experts can practice by visualizing their golf swing or swim stroke but newbies can not improve much that way. There is some physical evidence that the off-line model stuff is real, as when you imagine yourself walking, or watch someone else walking, some of the same parts of your motor cortex are active as when you are actually walking. My very favourite part of this explanation trail is as follows: animals got very good at modelling the behaviour of other animals, in order to predict what they will do next: Eventually, they/we started re-using the same systems to understand and explain our own behaviour into the future. This is (at least part of) what we call consciousness. Now, you may or may not buy this, but it's rather elegant as a hypothesis.

by ansible 13y ago

rdtsc 13y ago

Interesting. I do visualize in my head how kinetic energy depletes as it goes higher and potential energy increases. It is like a bubble that shrinks. I see motion vectors and how they change. Other examples are a conflict between 3 people, kind of see a graph of relationships with different colored arrows and how they change.

ansible 13y ago
Interesting. I do visualize in my head how kinetic energy depletes as it goes higher and potential energy increases. It is like a bubble that shrinks. I see motion vectors and how they change. I do similar sorts of things... it is excellent that you have trained yourself to think that way. But for time critical tasks such as catching a fly ball, that doesn't work so well. We have lots of different processes we use for different situations.

nitrogen 13y ago

Our brains are not, as far as I know, running any kind of recognizable simulation like we would with a computer. By this logic, a professional ball player should miss any ball thrown at an unfamiliar angle, and amateurs should only be able to catch balls thrown to them at specific angles and velocities. It doesn't take much to build an integrator or differentiator out of electronics, so with [big number] neurons available to the task, I'd be surprised if we weren't running some kind of predictive analog simulation. And so they 'remember' where the ball is going to land, and they remember how to move to get there. Do you have a mechanism in mind for how this 'remembering' takes place, if not via simulation encoded by DNA marked, proteins folded, and/or synapses grown in response to successes and failures over time?

robotresearcher 13y ago

"Our brains are not, as far as I know, running any kind of recognizable simulation like we would with a computer." One way to implement the 'remembering' of the ball position is to run a forward model of the trajectory in your head. Your brain has specialized hardware for running forward models (short-term simulations) of physical systems. You need these to control your body precisely in the face of delays in the feedback from your limbs. A nice story - it's a just-so story, but a nice one - is that we repurpose this simulation hardware to simulate systems we observe outside our bodies. Expert ball-catchers have a very good simulation, beginners have a bad one. If you're already an expert, you can get even better by running your simulation off-line: this may be why experts can practice by visualizing their golf swing or swim stroke but newbies can not improve much that way. There is some physical evidence that the off-line model stuff is real, as when you imagine yourself walking, or watch someone else walking, some of the same parts of your motor cortex are active as when you are actually walking. My very favourite part of this explanation trail is as follows: animals got very good at modelling the behaviour of other animals, in order to predict what they will do next: Eventually, they/we started re-using the same systems to understand and explain our own behaviour into the future. This is (at least part of) what we call consciousness. Now, you may or may not buy this, but it's rather elegant as a hypothesis.