Connectionists: How the brain works

[Tsvi Achler]

Well Said!

If I may add, the more a theory is different from what is in the
mainstream, the less people seem to want to know.
This means something that is significantly "new", (which I will define
as being significantly different from what is currently popular), is
less likely to be looked at.  In my experience, the more it is
different the less likely it is to be looked at, stifling research.
-Tsvi

On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 2:36 PM, Yu Shan <yushan.mail at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Suppose that one gave all in this connectionists list a largely correct
>> model about how the brain works, few on this list would be able to
>> understand it let alone agree with it!
>>
>
> Let's look at a recent example. Nikolic proposed his theory
> (http://www.danko-nikolic.com/practopoiesis/) about how the brain
> works a few weeks ago to the Connectionists. Upon finishing reading
> this paper, I was quite exited. The theory is elegantly simple and yet
> has great explanatory power. It is also consistent with what we know
> about evolution as well as the brain's organization and development.
> Of course, we don't know yet if it is a "largely correct model about
> how the brain works". But, to my opinion, it has a great potential.
> Actually I am thinking how to implement those ideas in my own future
> research.
>
> However, the author's efforts of introducing this work to the
> Connectionists received little attention. Connectionists reach 5000+
> people, who are probably the most interested and capable audience for
> such a topic. This makes the silence particularly intriguing. Of
> course, one possible reason is that lots of people here already
> studied this theory and deemed it irrelevant.
>
> But a more likely reason, I think, is most people did not give it much
> thought. If that is the case, it raises an interesting question: what
> is the barrier that a theory of how the brain works need to overcome
> in order to be treated seriously? In other words, what do we really
> want to know?
>
> Shan Yu, Ph.D
> Brainnetome Center and National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition
> Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Sciences
> Beijing 100190, P. R. China
> http://www.brainnetome.org/en/shanyu