Identity (Identity)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 23:25 (5532 days ago) @ David Turell

I contend that we will never "understand the brain's design principles" without a trial-and-error process of literally trying to build a brain.
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> > > It will be trial and error, with 100 billion neurons, self-controlled, with million of miles of axons and dendrites and who knows how many synapses. I admire your optimism but I'm still with Penrose.
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> > Nonsense here, digital logic requires none of those silly dendrites, axons and synapses. Electronic representations are more than sufficient. 
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> Yeah, but you will still have to analyze exactly what the brain is doing in each region, how it is modulating each neuron, and how it is growing new connections as it continues to learn from experience. Until all that is understood, you cannot model electronics. And I'm not sure we will ever fully understand all those functions and changes. If we do then you will be right.-By electronic representations, I mean symbolic variables that link neuron a through dendrite v to neuron b, and etc. In terms of building this model, work such as what is going on here at UNO will be foundational, as what they are trying to do is map all of the biochemical reactions into logical a->b->c->... structures. The work is complex, but the work they did on that paper I posted creates a wealth of information that didn't exist before, and the open-source model is only going to improve data collection. -We won't know how the brain does all of those things until we sit down and try to build this model. First we need known biochemical mappings, then we need to integrate them into a large model. Neuroscientists can't do that. -Other research is quite helpful, such as those scientists working to make computers out of biological components:-http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/358822.stm-By approaching the problem from both ends (in the practical manner of building computers and building models) we'll understand more about the brain than biochemistry alone can possibly provide. -In terms of analysis, techniques to analyze cognition are already in place by my AI friends; AI has been a much greater driver of cognitive research than any other method the last 30 years. We won't improve those models by studying petri dishes!!

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