Connectionists: The symbolist quagmire

[Prof Leslie Smith]

I presume the paper to which Tsvi Achler refers is

T. Achler,  Symbolic neural networks for cognitive capacities, Biological
Inspired Cognitive Architectures, 9, 71-81, 2014.

and it certainly seems relevant to this discussion.

--Leslie Smith

Tsvi Achler wrote:
> Going along with the thread of conversation, the problem is that academia
> is very political. The priority of everyone that thrives in it is to
> maintain or increase their position, so much so that they refuse to
> consider alternatives to their views.  This is amplified with a
> multidisciplinary background.
> My experience is neither Marcus and associates nor Hinton and associates
> are willing to look at systems that:
> 1) are connectionst
> 2) are scalable
> 3) use so much feedback that methods like backprop wont work
> 4) have self-feedback helps maintain symbolic-like modularity
> 5) are unintuitive given today's norms
> This goes on year after year, and the same old stories get rehashed.
> The same is true of related brain sciences fields e.g. theoretical
> neuroscience & cognitive psychology.
> In the end only those who are entrenched and tend to the popularity
> contest
> can get funding and publish in places where it will be read.  It is not
> worth pursuing or publishing anything novel in academia.
> The corporate world is all that is left because of the awful politics.
> Moreover Marcus and Hinton themselves enjoy the less political
> environment in corporate as well.
> -Tsvi
>
>
Prof Leslie Smith (Emeritus)
Computing Science & Mathematics,
University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA
Scotland, UK
Tel +44 1786 467435
Web: http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~lss
Blog: http://lestheprof.com