Jeff Bezos Is Funding a Wild Hunt for the Brain's 'Core Algorithm'

Posted by uxhacker 2 days ago

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Comments

Comment by pakl 1 day ago

There are ample known facts and published theories about neuroscience that have never brought together into a coherent framework. Everyone has their pet theories and focuses just on them in isolation. Let me know when some funder is genuinely interested in putting all the pieces together instead of grandstanding on a single idea.

Comment by morpheos137 1 day ago

The point one must recognize is imperfection and pet theories are what drives the research. a full theory of cognition would not require billions to store once known. People seek rents so they have an interest in maintaining mysteries and confusions. One of the easiest ways is the fallacious XORing of nature.

Comment by leecarraher 1 day ago

I feel like Jeff hawkins was working on this with HTMs, but they never really took off. I suspect it was hardware adaptability based, memory access patterns for sparse graph training aren't ideal candidates for t/gpus.

Comment by pakl 1 day ago

HTMs were a great theory but I never saw them function at more than 1 layer of hierarchy. So the “H” part was lacking.

Anyway since we know that any part of neocortex can be reached from any other within 3 hops, and there is more feedback connectivity than feedforward connectivity in nearly every part of neocortex, it should be called a heterarchy.

Hierarchy is a handy metaphor/mental crutch from understanding primate social organization, not necessarily how the brain works.

Comment by khelavastr 1 day ago

NetMF/NetSMF is a big part..

Comment by kelseyfrog 1 day ago

I don't know what the brain's 'Core Algorithm' is, but I know it can be expressed as a set of differential equations.

Comment by ZeroGravitas 1 day ago

Apparently the algorithm is:

1. Support an anti-intellectual fascist. 2. Have them cancel lots of basic science, run up debt and hand you part of the country's future income as tax cuts. 3. Use the tax cuts to do basic science privately 4. Get hailed as a hero of science

Comment by weregiraffe 1 day ago

Fascist is when tax cuts?

Comment by Moomoomoo309 1 day ago

No, being a fascist was point 1, meaning that needs to be satisfied before moving onto point 2.

Comment by morpheos137 1 day ago

the funny thing to me is money and wisdom are somewhat inversely corellated. thus the "core algorithm" is knowable but almost nobody would want to know it because then there is not mystery to rent seek from. The cost of discovery is strikingly cheap. Mimicing neuron for neuron is like if the wright brothers made a plane with feathers and flappy wings.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

> cost of discovery is strikingly cheap

We have zero evidence for this and a lot of evidence against.

> the "core algorithm" is knowable but almost nobody would want to know it because then there is not mystery to rent seek from

I’m having trouble parsing this meaningfully.

Comment by morpheos137 1 day ago

Second statement: same reason mathematicians and other knowledge professionals fret about LLMs. When your niche is something you know that others don't commoditization is a threat. If someone can distill insights chances are others can as well. When you peek behind the curtain you realize it is a thin veil not a "moat" The world runs on problem solving requiring friction and expertise and asymmetric information providing abirtrage or other particular advantage opportunities. Intelligence is non exclusionary the same way arithmetic is. Its a mathematical control system.

First statement: its pretty straight forward how a brain would work in the physical world given we know the laws of physics. the exact mechanics of cognition are the feathers and flappy wings. constraints and lawful physics are the abstract lift principle.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

> When you peek behind the curtain you realize it is a thin veil not a "moat"

Shadowy cabal is hiding the secret truth, got it.

> its pretty straight forward how a brain would work in the physical world given we know the laws of physics

This could be true in a world in which physics were solved.

> lawful physics are the abstract lift principle

Ironic to refer to lift, an emergent phenomenon, as a primitive of physics. (Is this rationalist lingo?)

Comment by ben_w 1 day ago

> Ironic to use lift, an emergent phenomenon, as primitive of physics. (Is this rationalist lingo?)

(Different person)

As a rat, no, it is not.

Reads to me much like Star Trek technobabble or New Age quantum woo.

Comment by morpheos137 1 day ago

shadowy cabal, no but nice strawman, instead billions of people with divergent interests who rationally optimize for indivual utility instead of truth. Nothing significant is unsolved in physics. That's why bullshit tech religions are outpacing actual innovation. No I am not a "rationalist" rather more of a ecological / systems thinker. I did not claim lift was a primitive of physics. rather it is an absraction that can be instantiated on multiple substrates. trying to imitate existing implementations is not always the most efficient way to ultilize an abstraction. Any way i dont really care if you believe me or not it is just funny to see people spending billions competing in a status game seeking utility while claiming to be seeking truth which is actually much less advantageous once fully known.