Connectionists: How the brain works

[Gary Cottrell]

Somewhat irrelevant to this discussion, but the bird-plane analogy is actually the other way around. As many of you probably know, studying birds was key to the Wright Brothers' figuring out how to control the airplane, which they saw as the main problem (this is cut-and-pasted from Wikipedia):

On the basis of observation, Wilbur concluded that birds changed the angle of the ends of their wings to make their bodies roll right or left.[30] The brothers decided this would also be a good way for a flying machine to turn—to "bank" or "lean" into the turn just like a bird—and just like a person riding a bicycle, an experience with which they were thoroughly familiar. Equally important, they hoped this method would enable recovery when the wind tilted the machine to one side (lateral balance). They puzzled over how to achieve the same effect with man-made wings and eventually discovered wing-warping when Wilbur idly twisted a long inner-tube box at the bicycle shop.

g.

On Jan 27, 2014, at 3:28 PM, "Balázs Kégl" <balazskegl at gmail.com> wrote:

>> While it is at least worth considering whether the arm from fin argument applies to the nervous system, because we don’t understand how the brain works, we can’t really answer the question whether there is some simpler version that would have worked just as well.  Accordingly, as with the radio analogy, in principle, asking whether a simpler version would work as well, depends on first figuring it out how the actual system works.  As I have said, abstract models are less likely to be helpful there, because they don’t directly address the components. 
> 
> Wouldn’t the airplane/bird analogy work here? Does being able to design an airplane help understanding how birds fly? I think it does. Evolution didn’t invent the wheel, so it had to go in a complex (and not necessarily very efficient) way to “design” locomotion, which means that airplane engines don’t really explain how birds propel themselves. On the other hand, both have wings, and controlling the flying devices looks pretty similar in the two cases. In the same way, if some artificial network can reproduce intelligent traits, we might be able to guide what we’re looking for in the brain (a model, whose necessity we agree on). Of course, scientific process rarely works in this way, but it’s because you need computers for this kind of “experimentation”, and computers are quite new.
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> Balázs
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> —
> Balazs Kegl
> Research Scientist (DR2)
> Linear Accelerator Laboratory
> CNRS / University of Paris Sud
> http://users.web.lal.in2p3.fr/kegl
> 
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> 
> 

[I am in Dijon, France on sabbatical this year. To call me, Skype works best (gwcottrell), or dial +33 788319271]

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