
The brain thinks in Lisp parse trees - albertcardona
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/apr07/4982
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jey
The title is not an accurate depiction of Numenta's "Heirarchical Temporal
Memories". "HTMs" are not recurrent neural networks either.

I don't like how this guy (Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm and Handspring)
claims to have figured out the fundamental algorithm being used in the cortex
without any research or data. His book "On Intelligence" is next in my reading
queue and maybe I'll be convinced after I read it... not counting on it
though.

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richcollins
How is a recurrent neural network a "Lisp parse tree"?

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greendestiny
Or a hierarchy a Lisp parse tree? Its great to see people thinking beyond
procedural languages but there is a lot more to computer science than Lisp.

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erdos2
Besides, the code is in C++, not lisp (unfortunately).

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albertcardona
Indeed very unfortunate. From numenta's website descriptions of nupic (the C++
HTM implementation), one can immediately shout Greenspun's Tenth Rule.

What motivated my wild comparison of HTMs and Lisp is:

\- HTMs do not distinguish program and data.

\- HTMs are fractal like a Lisp parse tree: sameness of structure at any
level.

\- HTMs program themselves from input, analogous to Lisp programs' ability to
change themselves at run time.

Whether the brain actually uses HTMs or not: as far as I know (as a researcher
in neuroscience), the HTM structure fits a simplified description of cortex
microarchitecture. As Hawkins says, the field of neuromorphic engineering and
computation is in its infancy.

