Jeff Bezos Is Funding a Wild Hunt for the Brain's 'Core Algorithm'(www.wired.com)
15 pointsby uxhacker4 hours ago6 comments
  • kelseyfrog5 minutes ago
    I don't know what the brain's 'Core Algorithm' is, but I know it can be expressed as a set of differential equations.
  • ZeroGravitasan hour ago
    Apparently the algorithm is:

    1. Support an anti-intellectual fascist. 2. Have them cancel lots of basic science, run up debt and hand you part of the country's future income as tax cuts. 3. Use the tax cuts to do basic science privately 4. Get hailed as a hero of science

  • pakl3 hours ago
    There are ample known facts and published theories about neuroscience that have never brought together into a coherent framework. Everyone has their pet theories and focuses just on them in isolation. Let me know when some funder is genuinely interested in putting all the pieces together instead of grandstanding on a single idea.
    • morpheos1372 hours ago
      The point one must recognize is imperfection and pet theories are what drives the research. a full theory of cognition would not require billions to store once known. People seek rents so they have an interest in maintaining mysteries and confusions. One of the easiest ways is the fallacious XORing of nature.
  • leecarraher3 hours ago
    I feel like Jeff hawkins was working on this with HTMs, but they never really took off. I suspect it was hardware adaptability based, memory access patterns for sparse graph training aren't ideal candidates for t/gpus.
    • pakl3 hours ago
      HTMs were a great theory but I never saw them function at more than 1 layer of hierarchy. So the “H” part was lacking.

      Anyway since we know that any part of neocortex can be reached from any other within 3 hops, and there is more feedback connectivity than feedforward connectivity in nearly every part of neocortex, it should be called a heterarchy.

      Hierarchy is a handy metaphor/mental crutch from understanding primate social organization, not necessarily how the brain works.

  • khelavastran hour ago
    NetMF/NetSMF is a big part..
  • morpheos1373 hours ago
    the funny thing to me is money and wisdom are somewhat inversely corellated. thus the "core algorithm" is knowable but almost nobody would want to know it because then there is not mystery to rent seek from. The cost of discovery is strikingly cheap. Mimicing neuron for neuron is like if the wright brothers made a plane with feathers and flappy wings.
    • JumpCrisscross3 hours ago
      > cost of discovery is strikingly cheap

      We have zero evidence for this and a lot of evidence against.

      > the "core algorithm" is knowable but almost nobody would want to know it because then there is not mystery to rent seek from

      I’m having trouble parsing this meaningfully.

      • morpheos1372 hours ago
        Second statement: same reason mathematicians and other knowledge professionals fret about LLMs. When your niche is something you know that others don't commoditization is a threat. If someone can distill insights chances are others can as well. When you peek behind the curtain you realize it is a thin veil not a "moat" The world runs on problem solving requiring friction and expertise and asymmetric information providing abirtrage or other particular advantage opportunities. Intelligence is non exclusionary the same way arithmetic is. Its a mathematical control system.

        First statement: its pretty straight forward how a brain would work in the physical world given we know the laws of physics. the exact mechanics of cognition are the feathers and flappy wings. constraints and lawful physics are the abstract lift principle.