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<div class="">On Mar 26, 2016, at 1:34 AM, John Clark <<a href="mailto:johnkclark@gmail.com" class="">johnkclark@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 1:03 AM, Robin D Hanson <span dir="ltr" class="">
<<a href="mailto:rhanson@gmu.edu" target="_blank" class="">rhanson@gmu.edu</a>></span> wrote:</div>
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You can code an awful lot of complexity into even 100MB of code, and if that is non-modular spaghetti object code instead of modular documented source code, it could take an awful long time to figure out. </div>
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<font size="4" class="">Then it might be better to look for the master learning algorithm directly rather than trying to reverse engineer the biological brain; the recent successes in deep machine learning like </font></div>
<font size="4" class="">AlphaGo
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makes me think we might not be too far from finding it.</div>
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<div>Even if there were a single “master” learning algorithm, instead of many more context dependent learning algorithms, there can still be many other relevant design choices, including choices of representations.</div>
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<div>On Mar 26, 2016, at 2:06 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki <<a href="mailto:rafal.smigrodzki@gmail.com" class="">rafal.smigrodzki@gmail.com</a>> wrote:
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<blockquote type="cite" class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;">### Some parts of the brain, such as the midbrain and structures inferior to it, are non-modular, spaghetti-like and hardwired in details - genetically determined
and running on completely different principles from the cortex. The cortex and parts of the basal ganglia are however highly modular and most likely running a relatively uniform underlying algorithm that determines both short-term function and the longer-term
processes, such as rewiring of the cortex. </span></blockquote>
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<div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;">Yes, some parts may be simple, and even occupy a large fraction of the brain. Even so other parts may no be, and even if they occupy a small fraction of the brain, it may take a long
time to figure out how to create systems that substitute effectively for them. I discuss this more at: <a href="https://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/03/how-good-99-brains.html" class="">https://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/03/how-good-99-brains.html</a></span></div>
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<div class="">Robin Hanson <a href="mailto:rhanson@gmu.edu" class="">rhanson@gmu.edu</a> <br class="">
Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University<br class="">
Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University<br class="">
See my new book: <a href="http://ageofem.com" class="">http://ageofem.com</a><br class="">
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