Slashdot Log In
Our Brains Don't Work Like Computers
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jun 29, 2005 07:27 PM
from the I'm-not-a-machine dept.
from the I'm-not-a-machine dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "We're using computers for so long now that I guess that many of you think that our brains are working like clusters of computers. Like them, we can do several things 'simultaneously' with our 'processors.' But each of these processors, in our brain or in a cluster of computers, is supposed to act sequentially. Not so fast! According to a new study from Cornell University, this is not true, and our mental processing is continuous. By tracking mouse movements of students working with their computers, the researchers found that our learning process was similar to other biological organisms: we're not learning through a series of 0's and 1's. Instead, our brain is cascading through shades of grey."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
comparisons (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:comparisons (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:comparisons (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlikely. First, what they are saying here is that there is no clock. The brain is fundamentally analog in both state and TIME. To "simulate" it using computer algorithms would likely require finely stepped integrators for every connection of every neuron and every chemical pathway. Even the modeling of the blood flow and its nutrients is likely critical to a successful simulation of the thought process in some way. Its not at all like a normal computing problem. Its more like computing physics. We'd need processors like the new PhysX chip though vastly more sophisticated. I'm thinking that a high fidelity of all of the connections of a single neuron in real time would likely take a full chip.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that we'll even be close to understanding how to teach the simulation if we created it. I'd put better odds on the creation of some sensing technology that could fully map the physical connections and the electrochemical state of every neuron and other component involved in thought (does anyone really think we know all of the components?). And I'd still place those odds very low.
And what if we could simulate it... should we? It is likely that we'd create many insane intelligences in the process, either because we didn't duplicate the processes close enough, didn't put in all of the instinct portions of the brain that actually have much more to do with true intelligence than the thinking portions, didn't provide the inputs that they were designed to have, or tried to improve on a analog machine with a complexity level far beyond modern math's ability to balance. And, whether or not its true, many would call them life. Turning them off would likely be considered the same as killing them. The ethical dilemmas that would come about are tremendous.
Parent
Re:comparisons (Score:5, Insightful)
That's wrong. Godel's Theorem shows that there exist true theorems that are unprovable -- by humans or computers. It doesn't say humans can "demonstrate" them better than a machine. At best, it shows you can "guess" a theorem (and wave your hands to make it seem plausible) and no one is able to DISprove it, but not that a human could "demonstrate" its truth when a machine couldn't. A mathematical proof is purely logical and computers can verify and generate these proofs, if not yet as elegantly as humans.
Parent
Re:comparisons (Score:5, Informative)
But a computer cannot demonstrate this truth. I don't claim to understand why not, but it clearly says in the wikipedia article that it can't.
Short answer: you're incorrect.
Long answer: The reason you seem to think that you are correct is also, I believe, incorrect. Godel's proof basically involves forming the statement "this statement is false" in a specialized language that allows you to do so without reference to pronouns--instead, he assigned each symbol a unique integer, and worked out ways of manipulating them both with and without regard to their "meaning". That part would be easy to do with a computer (e.g. asci/text editor/compiler).
Next, he posited a string of symbols where the meaning was related to the process for the manipulation of the meaningless symbols (this is also easy on a computer--sort of like using an editor to edit its own source code).
Using these, he constructed a relatively normal argument about the meaning level that coresponded to an argument at the symbol level--an argument that said "the argument represented by this long string of digits is unprovable"--but the kicker was the long string of digits was the coded representation of the argument itself. If false, the system could obviously not prove it (since we are assuming here that it only proves things that are true). Therefore it must be true, but that means it can't be proven within the system. Tricky, but there was nothing magical about the logic--no quantum mechanical must-derive-this-step-from-the-sprit-world voodoo that would make it impossible for a computer to follow.
--MarkusQ
P.S. A computer might not be able to understand the proof, but that shouldn't be held against it--after all, most of the people who discuss it don't understand it either.
Parent
Re:comparisons (Score:5, Insightful)
1. You can't derive the arithmetic of the natural numbers from it.
2. There is at least one true proposition that isn't a theorem in the system (i.e. it's incomplete, hence the name of Goedel's theorem).
3. The system isn't consistent.
(3) renders a deductive system worthless, and (1) renders it pretty weak, so one can hope at best for (2).
Note that nothing is said about humans versus machines, and there's no reason that humans aren't as subject to it as programs.
Example, which I think I read about in GEB (but customized for the current discussion): "lawpoop cannot consistently assert this proposition." Clearly that is a true statement. (Yes, it's silly, but Goedel's theorem goes through a lot of work to generate an arithmetic encoding of "This statement is not provable in deductive system S," which is much the same sort of statement.) Sorry, but there's nothing magic about humans.
Parent
Re:By 2015... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:comparisons (Score:5, Funny)
And given the people I deal with as customers in tech support, this is not an improvement. Quite the opposite really.
"I don't know what the IP address is Dave and I don't care. I just want you to make me work or I'll e-mail your supervisor with a nasty complaint."
Parent
And now for something nasty (Score:4, Insightful)
But what cracks me up is that the most arrogant assholes are the ones with the least skill or achievement. When you see someone harping the most about how he's uber-L33T because he knows what an IP address is, and how everyone else is an idiot... chances are it's someone who actually knows the _least_ about those. Chances are it's not a programmer who actually writes socket code, it's not a hardware engineer who's designed a network card, etc. No siree, it's a script-reader from the hell-desk that does the "I'm so l33t and everyone else is an idiot" fuss.
So you want to call people idiots if they don't know some computer trivia you know (off a list of canned answers)? Well, then being an EE and having some 20+ years of programming experience, I'll call _you_ an idiot, because you're below _my_ skill level.
Sure, you know what an IP or port number is or how to find it out in Windows. (Or can find it out on your list of canned answers.) But can you actually _use_ a socket on that port? Can you for example write a game server that listens on that port? If I gave you an old network card, can you find the right Linux kernel driver and change it to make it work with that card? Or what?
Or, ok, you do know what an IP address is. Congrats. Do you also know what a B-Tree is, how it works, and how to implement one in your code? Do you also know the difference between, say, MergeSort and QuickSort, and the influence of external (e.g., DB file on a disk) vs internal (in RAM) sorting on their performance? Can you implement either purely as, say, a state-machine driven by exceptions to signal state changes, just to prove that you actually understand the algorithm, as opposed to copying someone else's code off the net? Do you know the difference between bitmap indexes and b-tree indexes in Oracle, and can discuss when you might need one instead of the other?
Hey, it's computer stuff too. Very basic stuff too, nothing esoteric. We established already that computer stuff matters, and you're an idiot if there's something you don't know about them.
Parent
Fuzzy Networks (Score:3, Insightful)
-1, Roland Piquepaille (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:-1, Roland Piquepaille (Score:3, Insightful)
wonder if he's giving kickbacks to samzenpus for posting his stuff.
Re:-1, Roland Piquepaille (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
something's missing (Score:5, Funny)
How will this study affect your next thought? Go here [primidi.com] to discuss it further.
There, that feels more complete.
Re:something's missing (Score:3, Funny)
S***** Network Administration
site: primidi.com
classification: spam/advertising
access: denied
If you think this is an error please contact ***@**
The Network is the Computer (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Network is the Computer (Score:5, Informative)
So, for example, for a simple if statement waiting on user input, part of the CPU would process the "true" result of the statement and part would process the "false" one. When the user made a decision, one would be used and one would be thrown out. In theory, computing these branches ahead of time was supposed to be faster than doing things linearly.
Again, though, I'm not sure Intel went through with this. They were the subject of the article.
Parent
predictive branching (Score:5, Informative)
Granted, if the processor is wrong, it has to clear the pipeline and start anew (which is costly), but the benefits outweigh the negatives.
Parent
Computers can process "shades of gray" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Computers can process "shades of gray" (Score:3, Funny)
Fascinating (Score:5, Funny)
Next week's research topic: Do farts stink?
Re:Fascinating (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Informative)
It blocks stories submitted by Roland. Of course, you'd have to have installed greasemonkey. Which I forgot to do on re-install and hence saw this fucking stupid article.
Parent
Missing Comma (Score:5, Funny)
Our Brains Don't Work, Like Computers
So basically what this is saying... (Score:3)
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
1.) The GPS coordinates of each key on my keyboard.
2.) The streaming audio of my name and all of my friends and families name.
3.) The bio-mechanical force sequences for the hundreds of muscles used in picking up a glass every morning.
Beer will no longer render my circuits useless!
Newsflash (Score:5, Informative)
Who woulda thunk it.
ftp://ftp.sas.com/pub/neural/FAQ.html%23A2 [sas.com]
'Most NNs have some sort of "training" rule whereby the weights of connections are adjusted on the basis of data.'
Insert joke about the 1980's (or 60's/50's/40's) calling). Somehow I don't think Norbert Weiner would be the slightest bit surprised.
-Tupshin
Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
The Slashdot headline says our minds don't work like computers, end of sentence.
Had TFSH (The Fine Slashdot Headline) been accurate, this would've been a mind-blowing result and in need of some extraordinarily strong evidence to support such an extraordinary claim. The question of whether the human mind--sentience, consciousness, and all that goes with it--is a computable process is one of the most wide-open questions in AI research right now. It's so wide-open that nobody wants to approach it directly; it's seen as too difficult a problem.
But no, that's not what these guys discovered at all. They just discovered the brain doesn't discretize data. Significant result. Impressive. I'd like to see significant evidence. But it's very, very wrong to summarize it as "our brains don't work like computers". That's not what they proved at all.
Just once, I'd like to see a Slashdot editor read an article critically, along with the submitter's blurb, before posting it.
Re:Misleading (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see how that's at all possible given the underlying physical process. As voltage, or frequency, or whatever is the carrier for the "signal" traverses a synapse, at some level, nature itself quatifies it. There has to be a point where the level of the signal is distinguished as discrete from another level. One electron more or less, one Hz more or less. . . The question is, how consistent is the hardware at distinguishing the signal differences as discrete? I'm guessing that neurons probably aren't as sensitive as a purpose-designed piece of silicon could be. But maybe that inconsistency is a crucial part of the characteristics of data processing of biological nervous systems - those characteristics being what distinguishes them from technological systems. . . ?
Parent
Tomorrow on the "Painfully Obvious" (Score:5, Funny)
Sure hope my taxes don't pay for that "research".
Re:Tomorrow on the "Painfully Obvious" (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
The brain is not a computer (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone *really* think that computers and the brain work in the same way ? Or even in a significantly similar fashion ?
Well, by 'processors', I assume you mean neurons. These are activated to perform a firing sequence on output connections dependent on their input connections and current state, heavily modified by chemistry, propogation time (it's an electrical flow through ion channels, not a copper wire), and (for lack of a better word) weights on the output connections. To compare the processing capacity of one of these to a CPU is ludicrous. On the other hand, the 'several' in the quote above is also ludicrous... "Several" does not generally correspond to circa 100 billion...
No-one has a clear idea of how the brain really processes and stored information. We have models (neural networks), and they're piss-poor ones at that...
The brain behaves less like a computer and more like a chaotic system of nodes the more you look at it, and yet there is enormous and significant order within the chaos. The book by Kauffman ("The origins of order", I've recommended it before, although it's very mathematical) posits evolution pushing any organism towards the boundary of order and chaos as the best place to be for survival, and the brain itself is the best example of these ideas that I can think of.
Brain : computer is akin to Warp Drive : Internal combustion engine in that they both perform fundamentally the same job, but one is light years ahead of the other.
Simon.
Re:The brain is not a computer (Score:5, Insightful)
The point under discussion in this article is summed in this quote:
"More recently, however, a growing number of studies, such as ours, support dynamical-systems approaches to the mind. In this model, perception and cognition are mathematically described as a continuous trajectory through a high-dimensional mental space; the neural activation patterns flow back and forth to produce nonlinear, self-organized, emergent properties -- like a biological organism."
The goal is to forcefully point out (using an experiment) that the one way we think about mental processing, the digital computational model, is not very useful even at the trivial level of mental signal processing.
It's interesting how all the sarcastic comments about the "biological organism" reference completely miss the point. The point is that the signal is being processed in a way that could be modeled by the way a biological organism moves through space. It sniffs here, then there, then jumps to the solution. The signal processing itself exhibits emergent properties.
The reference to the dynamical system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_system [wikipedia.org]) is key. (I think people frequently fail to gloss the additional "al" and think this refers to some sort of generic "dynamic system"). Dynamical systems, although deterministic, are a foundational tool for developing chaos theory.
For me the interesting idea is that the default state of thought is in-betweeness. We stay jittering back and forth in an unresolved state until, suddenly, we aren't.
Parent
We are computers, just not /binary/ computers (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe that the mind is (simply?) a quantum computer, and the article seems to support that idea. The human brain utilizes a sort of general interconnectedness of things to process thoughts as dynamic probabilities of state, with conclusions only being properly arrived at after a certain ammount of calculation has occured, but with all probabilities esiting well before the completion of the thought.
Anyhow, I should probably stop rambling and go outside or something.
Evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
That makes perfect sense, seeing as our brains evolved [talkorigins.org] from other biological organisms.
Check out evolutionary psychology [wikipedia.org] for some information. You'll view the world differently afterwards.
Evolutionary psychology (or EP) proposes that human and primate cognition and behavior could be better understood by examining them in light of human and primate evolutionary history... The idea that organisms are machines that are designed to function in particular environments was argued by William Paley (who, in turn, drew upon the work of many others).
Universality of computation (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people ascribe the seeming magic of consciousness to some ineffable property of the brain, e.g., quantum mechanical effect. While other insist that its just what happens when you connect enough simple elements in a self-adaptive network.
The question is, are there neural input-output functions that are fundamentally not computable? If not, then a digital computer will, someday, reach human brain power (assuming Moore's law continues).
also worthy of note (Score:5, Informative)
Figured it was worth mentioning given the subject matter of the thread... I liked it.. good read, if a bit dry at times...
Brain vs. Mind (Score:5, Insightful)
Natural numbers (1,2,3...), true/false, up/down...
It's not unnatural to divide everything in half, heck our bodys are mostly symmetrical; the distiction comes in where the dividing line is.
We can weight our decisions in endless ways, if someone makes a statement, our belief of that statement depends on how many times we have heard it, our trust in the stater, if it meshes with known facts in the current context.
What I wonder is how far can a human mind be pushed in terms of concepts it can grasp and control it has, can a human visualise a 5 dimensional virtual object? control emotional responses, without supressing them? hold multiple contridictary world models? accelerate long-term memory access?
Even if you think of an electronic computer, it's just hordes of electrons rushing down pathways, only reliable because the voltage levels are continually refreshed at each step, a few electrons might wander off the path, but they are replaced at the next junction. Quantum Mob Rule.
How does the mind emerge from the brain? (Score:4, Insightful)
We look around our world and notice that computers are superficially similar to brains (e.g. they can both do math), so we hypothesize that they work similarly.
However, there's very little hard evidence supporting this hypothesis in the first place, so there's no "news" in this story.
Bottom line: The brain is not just a super-powerful computer.
Pretty Please (Score:4, Insightful)
Could we pretty, pretty please have a Roland Piquepaille section, so we can opt-out? I've been good all year, and it's almost my birthday, and I won't ask for anything for Christmas.
-Peter
Let's see the numbers (Score:5, Informative)
Fine, let's see the math. Let's see the trajectory calculations. How about those calculating the space? Calculating the number of dimensions the space has, and how fast that number changes over time?
40 years ago brain scientists realized that computer architecture made a good metaphor for how the brain works. (They did NOT assume there was no feedback, contrary to the article). It made a handy and productive way to look at things so they could figure out more about what was really going on.
10 years ago brain scientists realized that they could use the way cool chaos stuff the describe the way the brain works. Believe me, I know; I've been to the Santa Fe Institute twice. It worked particularly well for me because I'm essentially a signal analyst -- I HAVE to define a set of variables, estimate how well they work, and decide how many of my arbitrary variables to keep or throw out.
It's still only a metaphor. And unlike the specific specific processes described by cognitive science, the dynamic system stuff remains nebulous. It claims a mathematical legitimacy which it can really claim only in concept because the actual math of the acutal operations are is beyond the abilities of anyone making the claims. The fact that it *can* be described this way is no less trivial than the fact that processes can ge grouped according to the traditional cognitive science concepts.
Trajectories on phase space are soooooooo sexy. But if it's any good, it'll result in something more concrete than more people picking up this flag and waving it while shouting the new slogans and buzzwords. Until that happens I peg this with the study that "calculated" the "fractal dimension" of the cortex just because it has fold and folds in the folds.... so fsking what.
D'oh! It's Roland the Plogger, bogus as usual (Score:5, Interesting)
The path planner goes slower and generates paths that are initially ambiguous when faced with multiple alternatives. That's no surprise. I'm working on the steering control program for our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle, and it does that, too. Doesn't mean it's not "digital".
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:really?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:really?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that was sarcasam!
Parent
I hope not... (Score:4, Funny)
Are younger people that dumb nowadays?
I hope not, because if they are, I must finally be old.
Parent
Re: No, I didn't think that (Score:3, Funny)
> I thought that part of the difficulty in reproducing a mechanical brain was preciously it's shades of grey.
It's even made of grey matter.
Re:huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes it can, many have several ALUs and FPUs, and also more than one stage in their pipelines. The above hasn't been true since sometime in the nineties at the latest.
Parent
Re:This sounds familiar (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Error! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent