danshawen
Valued Senior Member
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29504761
The Washington Post here also carried an article on this subject today, and included an interesting and telling passage:
"it tells us not only how the brain understands space, but how it organizes complex cognitive processes."
The significance of their work has been compared to the mapping of the human genome earlier this century. I would agree with that assessment.
Ever since reading Jeff Hawkin's 2005 book 'On Intelligence', I have been hawking the view that the most fundamental sensory input as well as organizing principle for the human mind is that of length, or equivalently time (because time also corresponds to a length, cognitively speaking). Contrast this to the symbolic logic AI camp's determination to craft a similar engine based on numbers (like the computer you are using). I think this is unnatural, and for the same reason Tesla invented most of the technology for AC electric power generation and distribution. Any thinking machine that rivals our own based on numbers and mathematical logic is bound to hit a brick wall in terms of Godel's incompleteness theorem, and that's just for starters. What do you think (TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION)?
I became interested in such ideas while working with a young and brilliant team of roboticists in the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005, the first such race that had any winners. It paved the way for military contracts to be awarded for autonomous vehicles which also included a lot of development work for predator drones. Our entry, DEXTER, went 81 miles in the Mojave desert autonomously (using GPS) before getting a flat tire.
The connection is even deeper than the work associated with this Nobel would suggest. Our greatest thinkers (Newton, Einstein) dealt only with the concept of lengths, and they did so without having the slightest idea of what the concept actually means, in the same manner that a machine that is based on symbolic logic would have no clue as to what a number actually is. If your own mind isn't feeling a little puny at the thought of this, it probably should. Fortunately, there are ample means for finite minds such as ours to cope with the idea of such profound limitations.
The Washington Post here also carried an article on this subject today, and included an interesting and telling passage:
"it tells us not only how the brain understands space, but how it organizes complex cognitive processes."
The significance of their work has been compared to the mapping of the human genome earlier this century. I would agree with that assessment.
Ever since reading Jeff Hawkin's 2005 book 'On Intelligence', I have been hawking the view that the most fundamental sensory input as well as organizing principle for the human mind is that of length, or equivalently time (because time also corresponds to a length, cognitively speaking). Contrast this to the symbolic logic AI camp's determination to craft a similar engine based on numbers (like the computer you are using). I think this is unnatural, and for the same reason Tesla invented most of the technology for AC electric power generation and distribution. Any thinking machine that rivals our own based on numbers and mathematical logic is bound to hit a brick wall in terms of Godel's incompleteness theorem, and that's just for starters. What do you think (TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION)?
I became interested in such ideas while working with a young and brilliant team of roboticists in the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005, the first such race that had any winners. It paved the way for military contracts to be awarded for autonomous vehicles which also included a lot of development work for predator drones. Our entry, DEXTER, went 81 miles in the Mojave desert autonomously (using GPS) before getting a flat tire.
The connection is even deeper than the work associated with this Nobel would suggest. Our greatest thinkers (Newton, Einstein) dealt only with the concept of lengths, and they did so without having the slightest idea of what the concept actually means, in the same manner that a machine that is based on symbolic logic would have no clue as to what a number actually is. If your own mind isn't feeling a little puny at the thought of this, it probably should. Fortunately, there are ample means for finite minds such as ours to cope with the idea of such profound limitations.