[ExI] asim roy brain theory

[Brent Allsop]

Richard,

Thanks for this informative analysis and judgment.  As I started 
examining this, I had a similar feeling, but Richard, in operational 
brain mechanics, is clearly much more of an expert than I.

Additionally, non of this has anything to do with the 'Hard Problem' 
right Richard?  Which is a much more significant and likely to bear 
powerful world changing fruits (as in THE greatest scientific discovery 
- ever) in the very short turn future - right Richard?

Brent Allsop



Richard Loosemore wrote:
> spike wrote:
>> Is anyone here up to speed on Asim Roy?  This connectionist theory of 
>> the
>> brain seems cool, but I lack the background to judge it.
>>
>> http://www.physorg.com/news146319784.html
>
> I got a draft version of the paper earlier this year, and after a 
> quick scan I filed it under 'junk'.
>
> I just read it through again, and the filing stays the same.
>
> His basic premise is that connectionists argued from the very 
> beginning that they wanted to do things in a way that did not involve 
> a central executive.  They wanted to see how much could be done by 
> having large numbers of autonomous units do things independently.  
> Turns out, quite a lot can be achieved that way.
>
> But it seems that Asim Roy has fundamentally misunderstood the force 
> and the intent of that initial declaration by the connectionists.  
> There was a reason they said what they said:  they wanted to get away 
> from the old symbol processing paradigm in which one thing happened at 
> a time and symbols were separated from the mechanisms that modified or 
> used symbols.  The connectionists were not being dogmatic about "No 
> Controllers!", they just wanted to stop all power being vested in the 
> hands of a central executive ... and their motivation was from 
> cognitive science, not engineering or control theory.
>
> Roy seems to be completely obsessed with the idea that they are wrong, 
> while at the same time not really understanding why they said it, and 
> not really having a concrete proposal (or account of empirical data) 
> to substitute for the connectionist ideas.
>
> To tell the truth, I don't think there are many connectionists who are 
> so hell-bent on the idea of not having a central controller, that they 
> would not be open to an architecture that did have one (or several). 
> They just don't think it would be good to have central controllers in 
> charge of ALL the heavy lifting.
>
> Roy's paper has the additional disadvantage of being utterly filled 
> with underlines and boldface.  He shouts.  Not good in something that 
> is supposed to be a scientific paper.
>
> Sorry, but this is just junk.
>
>
>
>
> Richard Loosemore
>
>
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