tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post1649547679049089866..comments2024-03-22T00:30:09.536-07:00Comments on The Neurocritic: Thoughts of Blue Brains and GABA InterneuronsThe Neurocritichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-33798377047442551062021-02-01T20:31:12.419-08:002021-02-01T20:31:12.419-08:00Anonymous - Thanks very much for pointing that out...Anonymous - Thanks very much for pointing that out. NIH BRAIN is more transparent about that, I suppose.<br /><br />David in Tokyo - Thanks, I appreciate your insights. I've admired Lakoff's academic work on metaphors, but I stopped paying attention after his popular writing on framing had zero impact on the outcome of the US presidential election in 2015. This is not a unique failing on his part -- in general, mainstream social & cognitive psychology has not been able to influence (or even touch) the disintegration of "truth" and political discourse in America.The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-18825215493705690282021-02-01T00:41:45.628-08:002021-02-01T00:41:45.628-08:00The funny thing is nobody seems to realize HBP is/...The funny thing is <i>nobody</i> seems to realize HBP is/was foremost a sneak infrastructure- and tool building project, with the "simulate a whole brain" shtick as PR bait for the funders and surrounding society, because non-scientists would never approve that huge amount of funding for infrastructure. The aim: to build infrastructure advanced enough to support future hypermodern neuroscience, attached to a community using modern tools. The now-in-production EBRAINS and the surrounding tool ecosystem is the real heritage of HBP. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-77954054871861161802021-01-29T08:00:21.776-08:002021-01-29T08:00:21.776-08:00"my inclination is to say that we will never ..."my inclination is to say that we will never (never say never) be able to build a realistic computer simulation of the human brain."<br /><br />Of course. But that's because it's (a) the wrong question, and (b) premature. One of the speakers in the video you linked in your previous post argued that it's the cognitive end of cognitive neuroscience, not the neuro end, that's harder. She was, of course, correct. When listening to folks in the cognitive fields, I sometimes pull my hair out and scream at the screen, "You idiot, "cognitive" means "to think", and you've forgotten that we humans actually think*". All of which is to say, if you don't know what thinking is, even if you succeeded in simulating a human brain, you wouldn't learn anything, and your simulation wouldn't do anything, either. People take 3 years or so before they begin to have enough language to talk, and require appropriate inputs to make that happen.<br /><br />And, of course, premature, because the AI/cog. sci. types who were trying to figure out how humans think (a) didn't get very far (when I'm grumpier I say "failed miserably", but that's subject to the "speak for yourself" criticism) and (b) got drowned out by the neural network hype. (Gary Marcus is trying to get the AI end of this area back on track, so at least someone's noticed the mess.) (Of course, this presupposes that "human thought" actually is "symbolic reasoning" and that can actually be represented/implemented in computational models. But I believe this to be true.)<br /><br />*: I saw an interview with George Lakoff the other day, and was quite depressed. Even though he gets it that people think, and he's right that metaphor** is how (at least some of) language works, he still doesn't get it how amazing human cognitive abilities are (he thinks that metaphors are limited to "embodied" base concepts (front/back, up down, and the like), and that's just silly; people aren't that limited at all. Sigh. Still, it's be nice if the AI types could come up with computational models that get mileage from the metaphor idea.<br /><br />**: I'm trying to push my Japanese vocab to the next level, so when a word trips me up, I make a flash card with the word and the English glosses from a Japanese->English dictionary. When I find a word that I can't remember for the life of me, I look it up in a Japanese->Japanese dictionary, translate the definitions of the different senses and copy the examples to my flash card. Then I can sometimes remember it. What's usually going on is that the main usage is a metaphorical extension from an historical/original usage, but the J->E dictionary glosses don't make it clear what's going on there. Thank you, George L., I find myself saying. A lot.<br /><br />David in Tokyo, where even the footnotes have footnotes.<br />(I hope my ranting isn't getting repetitive: I'm not doing enough reading in this area.)<br />DJLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04036156397398405817noreply@blogger.com