
The Big Problem With “Big Science” Ventures Like the Human Brain Project - JumpCrisscross
http://nautil.us/blog/the-big-problem-with-big-science-ventureslike-the-human-brain-project
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mojoe
This line surprised me: “The dirty secret is that we don’t even understand the
nematode C. Elegans, which only has 302 neurons [in contrast with the nearly
100 billion in the human brain]. We don’t have a complete model of this tiny
organism.”

It's very interesting that there are creatures that have their entire behavior
determined by just a few hundred neurons. Idid not know this.

~~~
x5n1
I have a theory that the processing that happens in the brain does not all
happen by physical means confined to the brain. I think that neurons either
have quantum ability of using neurons in other dimensions or somehow have
access to some of the machinery that runs the universe itself.

That's how we get these ideas about the universe and everything in it, because
the brain taps into the computer that runs the universe. If you look at really
simple organisms with a few neurons doing really complicated things, it makes
you think there is something more going on there than just a few neurons
firing in a neural network.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Brains must be _at least_ orchestrating those computations, or you couldn't
explain all the various ways cognitive functions can be disabled with almost
pinpoint accuracy by damaging the brain in specific regions.

I think we know enough about brains of living things to be pretty sure all
required computation is being done within the body. Last time I checked, we
could pull something resembling a map of the environment out of rat's brain
via fMRI.

~~~
mathgenius
I think there is a valid counter argument to what you say here. Just because
we hear sound come out of the radio does not mean that this sound is created
by the radio. Disabling various regions inside the radio will also cause
various malfunctions.

> I think we know enough about brains of living things to be pretty sure...

Did you read the article? Seems like we have only a very feeble understanding
of the brain.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's why I wrote that it must be _at least orchestrated_ , in a way that a
radio orchestrates the sound by tuning in on correct frequency, amplifying and
decoding (digital) or doing FM->AM conversion. I'm not saying that the
original comment is for sure 100% wrong.

> _Seems like we have only a very feeble understanding of the brain._

Yes and no. Our understanding is very selective; we definitely lack the
details on everything, but we know the general picture and details of some
parts - which lets us have some confidence about how the thing works. We know
for instance that if brain is in fact just an antenna, it's not for anything
that goes over EM spectrum, and most likely neither by any particle known to
us. Otherwise we'd have figured it out already by accident - people would drop
dead underground or close to (shielded) nuclear reactors. On the other hand,
we can pull things that look like intermediate computation results out of
brains via fMRI.

This does not discard original comment's hypothesis, but lets us classify it
as "extremely, extremely unlikely".

~~~
mathgenius
> which lets us have some confidence about how the thing works

I don't buy this at all. Without understanding root causes, this is just stamp
collecting, and we have no clue how far we are from those root causes. At the
very bottom (we think) is quantum field theory, which we only really
understand in simple situations (eg. single particle interactions). At the
other bottom (and this is perhaps a more orthodox concern) is "chaoplexology",
emergent phenomena and all of that.

If a four billion old intelligent alien race handed you one of their
computers, do you think you would be able to work it out any time soon? (btw
i'm not suggesting this is literally how we evolved, but just to give a
different perspective on evolution as we currently conceive it.)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I don 't buy this at all. Without understanding root causes, this is just
> stamp collecting, and we have no clue how far we are from those root causes.
> At the very bottom (we think) is quantum field theory, which we only really
> understand in simple situations (eg. single particle interactions)._

No matter how many more levels are down there, everything has to add up to
normality. When we discovered relativity, apples didn't suddenly start to fall
up. We may discover new ways of looking at the world, or new things hiding
behind that n-th fractional digit, but the world will work in the same way the
day after such discovery as it worked the day before.

Unless the fundamental laws of the universe have conditionals that branch on
cognitive state of human beings, at which point all bets are off and you can
assume anything can happen. We have hovewer no evidence that would suggest
that hypothesis over the usual one, that the world works the way it works
whether we know how or not.

> _If a four billion old intelligent alien race handed you one of their
> computers, do you think you would be able to work it out any time soon?_

I would be able to work _something_ out. For starters, that I'm dealing with a
computational device. It's hard to imagine what would be the level of
technology four billion years old aliens, nor what problems would they be
trying to solve - but I'm pretty sure that if you travelled back in time and
dropped Isaac Newton a PC with a nuclear battery (and infinite supply of spare
parts) he'd figure out some basics of how it works and why it does the thing
it does. The very process by which humans do that is called "science".

I guess my point is - we definitely don't know everything, but that doesn't
allow us to assume "shit's magic" and every point of view is equally valid.
There is observable evidence that shifts probability towards some theories and
away from the others.

~~~
mathgenius
> or new things hiding behind that n-th fractional digit

Indeed, this is where we disagree: you think brain science is at the n-th
fractional digit (for some decent value of n) and I see little evidence of
this.

> There is observable evidence that shifts probability towards some theories
> and away from the others.

This relies on having good priors and is therefore at the subjective side of
science. Perhaps I have a less optimistic view of science than you: as a quite
fallible human activity, often deceived, lacking in humility, corrupted by
money, and basically chasing after whatever is in fashion at the moment. All
of this gets us back to the issues discussed in the original article.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Indeed, this is where we disagree: you think brain science is at the n-th
> fractional digit (for some decent value of n) and I see little evidence of
> this._

I didn't mean that in a way physicists at the turn of XIX century meant, i.e.
"we've discovered everything that is to be discovered, what remains is just
refining results to more fractional digits".

My point is that whether we stumble upon a new scientific revolution behind
that nth digit or whether it hits us suddenly out of a blue, it all has to add
to normality. The world didn't start to behave any different when we
discovered quantum physics.

> _Perhaps I have a less optimistic view of science than you: as a quite
> fallible human activity, often deceived, lacking in humility, corrupted by
> money, and basically chasing after whatever is in fashion at the moment._

Oh I have a pretty strong view of science, namely that 90% of "soft sciences"
developed in the last few decades is utter crap, and so is most of the recent
medicine. Physics has it little better, because things are easier to
empirically verify; you can't bullshit your way through it so easily because
someone will notice, at the latest when they try to build a device based on
your research and realize electrons don't give a damn about p-values.

I just think - and that again is my determination based on the things I've
read and learned - that we have enough direct, physics-rooted evidence to
prefer "brain computes everything" over "brain is just an antenna" as a
theory. Probably not enough to reject the latter, but enough to prefer the
former.

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anonmeow
>In fact, there’s actually no such thing as big science; we should really be
calling it big engineering.

This is so true. Engineering is undervalued in comparison to science. It's
easier to sell multi-billion project to the general public if you label it as
science. Scientists are much more publicly visible than engineers; they are
Nobel winners, geniuses, brilliant men single-handedly unraveling mysteries of
the universe (or so it seems to the layman). Engineers generally work in
larger teams, don't seek individual fame, don't receive their Nobel prize.

And yet our lives depend upon the quality of engineers' work on a daily basis.
Our largest global problems (climate, energy, pollution) are engineering
problems. Shouldn't we praise engineers more?

~~~
mathgenius
I agree that the engineering involved in these big projects is astonishing and
worthy of great praise, but I disagree with calling it "big engineering".
Building a bridge is big engineering. Where would the engineers on these big
science projects be without the physicists/scientists exact specifications?

~~~
nightski
Has there ever been an engineering project where the physicists/scientists
give exact specifications? They are approximations at best, just enough
insight that engineers can find a way to make them useful.

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UhUhUhUh
Bottom-up vs. Top-down. Empiricism vs rationalism. There is unfortunately a
dramatic lack of flexibility between the two. It's like Liverpool vs
Manchester United. There is also the fact that money doesn't flow as easily
towards ideas, immaterial entities, (rationalism) as towards empiric results,
tangible entities (empiricism). Data are also much easier to gather and store
than ideas to find, which fosters the nsaization of science. An idea is worth
nothing, a petabyte of data is worth something.

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karmapolice
This it how it happened:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhsZll_P1iA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhsZll_P1iA)

