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Sorry, please use the following version. -John<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/21/15 7:31 PM, Juyang Weng wrote:<br>
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<div class="moz-forward-container">Dear Colleagues,<br>
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Is the following material too ahead of time for this
connectionist community? Please feel free to reply to all with
your comments. Some of us like to get your inputs to shape the
text. <br>
<br>
------ Version 5 -----<br>
The Brain Principles Manifesto <br>
(Draft) <br>
<br>
Historically, public acceptance of science was slow. For
example, Charles Darwin waited about 20 years (from the 1830s to
1858) to publish his theory of evolution for fear of public
reaction. It took about 20 years (by the 1870s) the scientific
community and much of the general public had accepted evolution
as a fact. Of course, the debate on evolution still goes on
today. <br>
<br>
Is the public acceptance of science faster in modern days? Not
necessarily so, even though we have now better and faster means
to communicate. The primary reason is still the same but much
more severe --- the remaining open scientific problems are more
complex and the required knowledge to convincingly understand
goes beyond any single person. <br>
<br>
For instance, network-like brain computation --- connectionist
computation --- has been long doubted and ignored by industry.
Kunihiko Fukushima introduced Convolutional deep networks by at
least 1980. Weng, Ahuja and Huang published Max-pooling in deep
fully automatic learning networks by 1992. However, Apple,
Baidu, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and other major related
companies did not show considerable interest till after 2012.
That is a delay of about 20 years. The two techniques above are
not very difficult to understand. However, these two suddenly
hot techniques have already been proved obsolete by the
discoveries of more fundamental working principles of the
brain. <br>
<br>
Industrial and academic interests have been keen on a
combination of two things --- easily understandable but
superficial tests and which companies are involved. However,
the newly known brain principles have told us that the ways to
conduct such tests will give only vanishing gains that do not
lead to a realistic zero error rate, regardless how many more
images can be added to the training sets and how long the
Moore’s Law can continue. Do our industry and public need
another 20 years? Or more? <br>
<br>
Oct. 2011 a highly respected multi-disciplinary professor kindly
wrote: “I tell these students that they can work on brains and
do good science, or work on robots and do good engineering. But
if they try to do both at once, the result will be neither good
science nor good engineering.” How long does it take for the
industry and public to accept that that pessimistic view of the
brain was no longer true even then?<br>
<br>
The brain principles that have already been discovered would
bring fundamental changes in the way humans live, human
countries and societies are organized, and the way humans treat
one another. The following questions point to some concrete
fundamental changes that benefit all humans. However,
conventionally, scientists in natural sciences do not address
politics. Albert Einstein and Norm Chomsky are among
exceptions.<br>
<br>
The brain of anybody, regardless of his education and
experience, is fundamentally short sighted, in both space and
time, determined by the known brain principles. Prof. Jonathan
Haidt documented well such shortsightedness in his book “<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Righteous-Mind-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777">The
Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and
Religion</a>”, although not in terms of brain computation. <br>
<br>
In terms of brain computation, the precise circuits in your
brain self-wire beautifully according to your real-time
experience (the genome only regulates) and their various
invariance properties for abstraction also largely depend on
experience. Serotonin (e.g., caused by threats), dopamine
(e.g., caused praises) and other neural transmitters quickly
change the way these delicate circuits work but you feel
everything inside the brain is normal. Therefore, you make
mistakes but you still feel normal in the brain. Everybody is
like that, including the politicians in the questions below.<br>
<br>
Surprisingly, to understand how the brain works requires
sophisticated automata theory in computer science (J. Weng, <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scirp.org%2Fjournal%2FPaperDownload.aspx%3FpaperID%3D53728&ei=21rnVP7fB4KZyAT-noH4Cg&usg=AFQjCNEzHz-YDhivI1esDtgKg84SEx4RuQ&bvm=bv.86475890,d.aWw&cad">Brain
as an Emergent Finite Automaton: A Theory and Three Theorems</a>,
IJIS, 2015). This automata brain model proposes that each brain
is an automaton, but also very different from all traditional
symbolic automata because it programs itself --- emergent. No
traditional automata can program themselves in the sense of
Turing Machine but a brain automaton does. <br>
<br>
The automata brain model predicted that neural circuits
precisely record the statistics of experience, roughly
consistent with neural anatomy (e.g., Felleman & Van Essen,
Cerebral Cortex, 1991). In particular, the model predicted that
“shifting attention between `humans’ and `vehicles’ dramatically
changes brain representation of all categories” (J. Gallant et
al. Nature Neuroscience, 2013) and that human attention “can
regulate the activity of their neurons in the medial temporal
lobe” (C. Koch et al. Nature, 2010). The model raised questions
to claims that neurons encode exclusively sensory information
like the “place” cells in the work of 2014 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine instead of a combination of both place
and top-down attention context reported by Koch et al. and
Gallant et al. and theoretically predicted by the automata brain
model. <br>
<br>
Unfortunately, the automata brain model implies that all
neuroscientists and neural network researchers are unable to
understand the brain of their studies without a rigorous
training in automata theory. For example, traditional models
for nervous systems and neural networks focus on pattern
recognition and do not have the capabilities of a grounded
symbol system (e.g., “rulefully combining and recombining,”
Stevan Harnad, Physica D, 1990). Automata theory deals with
such capabilities. <br>
<br>
Understanding brain’s automata would enables us to see answers
to a wide variety of important questions, some of which are
raised below. We do not provide yes/no answers here, only raise
questions. The automaton brain model predicts that there is no
absolute right or wrong in any brain but its environmental
experiences wire and rewire the brain. <br>
<br>
How can our industry and pubic understand that the door for a
great opportunity that has opened up for them? How can they see
the economical outlooks that this opportunity brings with it?<br>
<br>
How should our educational system change to prepare our many
bright minds for the new brain age? Has our government been
prompt to properly respond to this modern call from the nature?<br>
<br>
How should our young generation act for to this new opportunity
that is unfolding before their eyes? Is a currently narrowly
defined academic degree sufficient for their career?<br>
<br>
Is it consistent with the U.S. people’s interest for the
respected Mr. Barack Obama to have authorized the bombing of
ISIS, sanctioned Russia because of what happened in Ukraine,
rejected conversations with North Korea for what the respected
Mr. Kim Jong-un did, increased extra tax on Americans who create
many jobs, and planed to tax Americans’ overseas ventures which
encourages them to drop U.S. Citizenship? Shortsighted? <br>
<br>
The same ISIS bombing question goes to the respected Mr.
François Hollande. What is the relationship between the armed
attacks on the weekly Charllie Hebdo and the French ISIS bombing
that killed many more innocent civilians as well as racial
discrimination existing in France? <br>
<br>
Is it consistent with the Chinese people’s interest for the
respected Mr. Jinping Xi to conduct anti-graft struggle using
the Communist Party rules without the due process of the Chinese
legal system and to bicker about islands with China’s neighbors
like Japan, Vietnam, and Philippines that negatively affected
economy and tourists’ safety?<br>
<br>
Is it consistent with the Israelis people’s interest for the
respected Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu to take his current approach to
Israel’s Arab neighbors? <br>
<br>
How should all government officials take advantage of the new
knowledge about their own brains? Should people in every
country require them to learn brain theory and correct their
feel-normal mistakes?<br>
<br>
We are from all walks of life and from all regions of the
world. At present, we do not understand the scientific
underpinnings of the material in this Manifesto, just like the
public of Darwin’s time. However, these issues are relevant to
the future of our nations and our lives. We declare to form the
Brain Principles Society, in order to promote human
communication and understanding of brain principles and their
implications to human societies so as to improve the quality of
life for all human beings on this planet. There is a lack of
society that regards social sciences as part of brain science
and considers automata theory to be relevant to brain science
and social sciences. However, we are all governed by the same
set of brain principles.<br>
<br>
--- end ---<br>
<br>
-John
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
--
Juyang (John) Weng, Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program
428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
Tel: 517-353-4388
Fax: 517-432-1061
Email: <a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:weng@cse.msu.edu">weng@cse.msu.edu</a>
URL: <a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.cse.msu.edu/%7Eweng/">http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/</a>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
--
Juyang (John) Weng, Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program
428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
Tel: 517-353-4388
Fax: 517-432-1061
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:weng@cse.msu.edu">weng@cse.msu.edu</a>
URL: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/">http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/</a>
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