yet more on shift invariance

[Geoffrey Hinton]

The argument that Jerry Feldman gave for the difficulty of learning shift
invariance illustrates a nice point about learning.

He talked about learning to recognize a SINGLE shape in different locations.
I think he is probably right that this is impossible without built in
prejudices.  But the implication was that if it was true for ONE shape then it
would be true for a bunch of shapes.  This is where the argument breaks down.
Its like the point being made by the life-time learning people, except that
here the separate tasks are not presented one after another but jumbled
together.  

Geoff