
The Human Brain: Even Basic Facts Are Hotly Contested - laurex
https://mindmatters.ai/2019/04/the-human-brain-even-basic-facts-are-hotly-contested/
======
jolux
This is a publication of the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative
think tank which advocates intelligent design and has a department called the
Center on Human Exceptionalism.

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pfortuny
Well yes. However the experiment they talk about was made with rats.

~~~
acqq
And with rats they conclude the title "The Human Brain: Even Basic Facts Are
Hotly Contested"?

It's enough to see the other titles of their articles to see their agenda:
"Human Exceptionalism." And "intelligent design."

~~~
Conjoiner
Rats have brains as well

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chmod775
Rats are quadripedal and cars kind of are too, so cars must live in sewers.

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simonh
Note the sneaky non sequitur at the end, which of course this being the
Discovery Institute was the whole point of the article:

>Maybe it’s worse than they fear. Perhaps the brain doesn’t and can’t operate
like a piece of machinery at all. And vice-versa.

Just because the brain may not work like an 'ideal' neural network running in
a computer simulation, that doesn't in any way say that it couldn't be
duplicated using a non-'ideal' neural network simulation.

It may just mean we need to adjust the form of the simulation.

~~~
winter_blue
You’re implicitly suggesting that the brain “operates like a piece of
machinery” and that we just need to adjust the form of “simulation”. The
problem with this is that you’re also implying that the brain (and human mind)
is a _deterministic system_.

The implication of determinism is that everything is predictable. Given a set
of inputs, in a deterministic system whose rules we _fully know_ , the output
is entirely predictable. We could extend this determinism to the whole
universe, and reduce the universe into a pure function 'f' with a some
specific initial state 'x'. Starting with f(x), for every unit quantization of
time, f is applied on its previous result --- f(f(f....f(x)....))). And that's
reality. (If you believe in a Big Crunch / Big Bang cycle, the output of 'f'
at some point cycles back to the original 'x'.) The initial state 'x', and the
definition of the universe function 'f' _is_ existence -- the totality of all
that is.

I don't have any proof that we are not living in a deterministic universe, but
all I can say is that, philosophically, I find the idea of determinism to be
extremely upsetting. It empties life of any meaning. Why even continue living
if everything you do was pre-programmed at the beginning of the universe?
Determinism implies that the values of 'f' and 'x' could be blamed for the
Holocaust. Moral responsibility becomes meaningless, because everything is
pre-programmed. I think a lot of people, if they deep-down believed in this
sort of mechanical determinism, they would sink into a very deep deep
depression. I struggled with this myself, as a teenager—and I’ve emphatically
rejected human mind determinism.

Believing in free will on the other hand, is very empowering. Believing in the
concept of free will can in and of itself imbue one's life with a certain
degree of meaning, purpose and drive. It means what you choose to do, matters.
Life is meaningful; we’re not just empty automatons executing our pre-
programmed futures under illusion of choice / free will. We _are_ sentient
beings with free being.

From the point of view of physics, I think free will in biological organisms
will eventually be proven to some degree. The fact that in the last century,
practically every physicist has come to accept that there's a lot of
unpredictable behavior in matter, that cannot be deterministically predicted,
and can only be described with probability distributions, has been very
reassuring. My theory is that free will emanates from somewhere in these
probability distributions, and is amplified in living organisms.

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elcomet
This is interesting. You are basically saying that free will is the same as
non-determinism. I don't think that's the case. For me, non-determinism is
just randomness (quantum for example), and doesn't imply free will. Can you
just say 'your actions are random, therefore you have free will '?

First, 'free will' in the physics sense doesn't really exist. Everything is
particles, and particles don't have 'will'. Your body is constituted of
particles that follow their own path and interact. This can be deterministic
or not, it doesn't matter.

Then, you can believe that there is something that we cannot see that can be
called 'free will', like a soul, but this is a religious belief.

But we can look at free will in the philosophical sense. People have a
conscience, they are conscious of themselves, and of their own free will.
Also, your actions are only a product of your own inputs (your senses) and
your outputs. I believe those are better arguments for defining free will. As
free will doesn't exist in physics, we have to give it a definition. And I
think this is true whether the universe is deterministic or non deterministic.

~~~
Retra
On top of that, you can easily emulate non-determinism in deterministic
systems and vice versa. So why would it even matter?

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winter_blue
It’s impossible to have actual non-determinism in a deterministic system. Non-
determinism is emulated in software using random number generators. If you
know the seed (the ‘x’) and the definition of the random function (the ‘f’),
you can predict all outputs, analogous to my f(..(x)..) universe above.

There’s no programmatic random number generator that is truly random. (I mean
random in the sense that it’s entirely unpredictable; not in the sense that
the distribution of the random number generator covers all possibilities
uniformly over many calls.)

Hardware random number generators _are truly random_ (like the RDRAND
instruction in x86 CPUs which is seeded by an on-chip entropy source). But if
you’re relying on physical entropy, it’s not a deterministic system anymore.
You simply can’t emulate non-determinism in a deterministic system.

~~~
Retra
Why do you say 'actual'? I can emulate a chemical reaction in a computer, but
that does not mean I have produced an 'actual' chemical reaction.

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sadness2
Something working with neural networks has helped me to come to terms with is
that we are probabilistic creatures, and even things we call facts are things
we simply feel very confident about. Science itself is a process of increasing
confidence in an outcome, not an exercise in certainty.

~~~
zakk
The fact that an artificial neural network (which very roughly mimics human
brain) is probabilistic in nature does not have any implication for Science as
a whole.

Science can make predictions that are extremely accurate (think ten
significant digits) and the uncertainty on that prediction (i.e. the eleventh
significant digit) does not have anything to do with neural networks or us
being "probabilistic creatures", whatever that means.

~~~
sadness2
Even in your ideal experimental scenario, the laws of probability state that
before the 10,000,000,000th such study is completed, we will see a case where
the findings turn out to be incorrect.

We learn by experience, and we build weightings, and both our gut reactions
and careful conclusions are simply the ones which win the confidence ratings.
Logic may be an exception by virtue of it's mathematical nature, but any facts
involved are not, and we fall back on judgement calls most of the time even
when we think we're being logical.

~~~
zakk
> Even in your ideal experimental scenario, the laws of probability state that
> before the 10,000,000,000th such study is completed, we will see a case
> where the findings turn out to be incorrect.

And yet by means of statistics one can model the errors, and obtain an
experimental measurement with 10 significant digits.

And, guess what, it agrees with the theory! Ten. Significant. Digits.

> Logic may be an exception by virtue of it's mathematical nature, but any
> facts involved are not, and we fall back on judgement calls most of the time
> even when we think we're being logical.

That's not how Science works.

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IshKebab
This article is rather confused. First, just because processing is distributed
doesn't mean that there aren't different areas of the brain that are _more_
involved in certain things. The visual cortex is pretty clearly for vision for
example.

Second, they seem to be saying that AI is not like the brain because it is a
"switch" (what?) and doesn't have distributed processing/representations like
the brain? Or something? It's hard to know what they're trying to say because
it doesn't make any sense.

~~~
agildehaus
If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see this is sponsored by
"Discovery Institute".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Institute)

So no surprise it's a confused article.

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return1
> Thus they determined that the brain does not operate like a set of switches,
> as we used to think

Nobody thinks that. Not even in neuroscience. Karl Lashley's experiments with
cats happened well before the 50s and he concluded that there is no specific
place where memories and learning are formed. We know that some areas
specialize in _mainly_ doing one thing or another

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ptah
this article is a massive waste of time. most AI researchers acknowledge that
neural networks don't match the way the brain works

~~~
Conjoiner
so those researchers can skip reading the article, the rest of us may like it

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KingFelix
Yes. So many scientists, so many biases, much still to discover/understand. I
wonder if we will be able to find some solid info on what's going on. I like
Jeff Hawkins discussion surrounding this idea, or David Chalmers idea of the
hard problem. We have tons of info/facts about what's happening in the brain
physiologically, locations of things, neutral pathways, etc. We don't have a
grasp on consciousness though. But, Chalmers, Hawkins, Dennet, ...... All have
strong beliefs. It's a curious fundamental mystery, and so wonderful.

~~~
acqq
Not a mystery at all, unless you start with the premise of the "Human
Exceptionalism" and as jolux rightfully points here, the publisher Discovery
Institute has even a whole department called "the _Center on Human
Exceptionalism_."

That's how they start from the false premise and come to the false
confirmation of that false premise with a religious answer that it's "a
mystery."

Interestingly, the editor of this particular publication writes in his article
that he is aware that one doesn't have to start from such a false premise, but
that they go "way beyond this":

[https://mindmatters.ai/2018/07/why-mind-matters-
matters/](https://mindmatters.ai/2018/07/why-mind-matters-matters/)

"Consciousness, for example, is defined in the dictionary as being aware of
your surroundings. A robot with environmental sensors is conscious by this
definition. In our discussions, the topic of AI consciousness is way beyond
this."

At least he doesn't use in that text the direct "it's a mystery" approach. But
looking at the _titles_ of the articles there where he's an editor we see:

"Possible Minds?: But What If the Minds Are Impossible?"

"New Evangelical Statement on AI is Balanced and Well-Informed "

"Why Apes Are Not Spiritual Beings"

"Things Exist That Are Unknowable"

Etc.

~~~
egjerlow
Here we go again :)

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caprese
> The experiment, conducted on anesthetized rats, may help us understand brain
> injury better

Maybe anesthetized rats process stimuli extremely differently, as the brain
tries to determine location of input

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Veedrac
To those who haven't yet read the article, don't bother. Here's a 15-second
rendition of the argument to save you the time:

A rat study showed most of a rat brain was used to process information from
touch. This does not match ‘function localization’ models of the brain, and
might be relevant to brain injury outcomes. There is also debate to what
extent, if any, neuron growth happens in adulthood. Therefore we should be
suspicious about neuromorphic computation and maybe the brain isn't substrate
independent.

No, I'm not skipping a step with ‘therefore’, it really is precisely that
abrupt, arbitrary, and poorly-reasoned.

~~~
jakobegger
It's not an in-depth article, but it does make an important point: That we
actually understand very little of how our brain really works.

People here on HN used to have a lot of discussions about uploading brains,
neuro-preservation, simulating brains, etc. The implicit assumption was always
that we already have a pretty solid understanding of how the brain works (it's
just a neural network) and we just need to solve a few minor problems (just
take a snapshot of all the synapses and we're good to go!).

The truth is, of course, that we have no clue if a neural network even is a
good model beyond the most simple circuits (like certain reflexes), and
scientists are still scratching the surface.

~~~
Veedrac
I mostly agree, but with two caveats. We do actually know that ‘neural
networks’ are poor models for the brain. Backpropagation is unphysical and
brains aren't acyclic graphs, for example. What there's uncertainty about is
the degree by which they share principles. A glider and an eagle are pretty
darn different, and a glider is a terrible model of an eagle, but they do at
least utilize the same laws of fluid dynamics to fly. So the question holds
for neural networks.

As to neuropreservation, it's important to note that we don't need to
understand the brain in order for it to be a good idea. What we care about is
whether there will be a future wherein someone does, and whether the technique
preserves enough mental structure to allow the brain to be recovered by that
somebody.

