Which is fishy, given there is large literature on interpretation of behavior in terms of control systems. Just look at google scholar. But forming a representative sample of these works with adequate understanding of what they are about would take me, I think, a couple of days, so I’d rather someone else more interested in the issue do that.
There is also a large literature on understanding the brain in terms of chaos
theory, cellular automata, evolution, …. , and all of those can shed light
on some aspects. The same is definitely true for control systems theory.
The trouble comes when extrapolating this to universal hammers or to the higher
cognitive levels; the literature I could find seems mostly about
robotics. Admittedly, I did not search very thoroughly, but then again, life
is short and if the poster wants to convince me, the burden of proof lies not on my side.
There is also a large literature on understanding the brain in terms of chaos theory, cellular automata, evolution, …. , and all of those can shed light on some aspects.
This statement strikes me as false. Evolution says things about what the brain does, and what it ought to do, but nothing about how it does it. Chaos theory and cellular automata are completely unrelated pieces of math. Everything else is either at the abstraction level of neurons, or at the abstraction level of “people like cake”; PCT is the only model I am aware of which even attempts to bridge the gap in between.
life is short and if the poster wants to convince me, the burden of proof lies not on my side.
Reality does not care who has the burden of proof, and it does not always provide proof to either side.
Reality does not care who has the burden of proof, and it does not always provide proof to either side.
If I’m only willing to expend a certain amount of effort for gaining understanding of a given aspect of reality, then I won’t listen to any explanation that requires more effort than that. Preparing a good explanation that efficiently communicates a more accurate picture of that aspect of reality is the burden of proof in question, a quite reasonable requirement in this case, where the topic doesn’t appear terribly important.
I don’t see anything ‘false’ about the statement. I simply stated some other
fields that have been used to explain aspects of the brain as well, and that,
while PCT may be a useful addition, I have seen no evidence yet that it is ‘life
changing’.
I enjoy reading LW for all the bright people and new ideas things to learn. In
this case however, I was a bit disappointed, mainly because of the
self-help-fluff. There are enough places for that kind of material already, I think.
Of course, I cannot demand anything, it’s just some (selfish?) concern for LW’s S/N-ratio.
PCT is the only model I am aware of which even attempts to bridge the gap in between.
FWIW, Hawkins’s HTM model (described in “On Intelligence”) makes another fair stab at it, and has many similar characteristics to some of PCT’s mid-to-high layers, just from a slightly different perspective. HTM (or at least the “memory-prediction framework” aspect of it) also makes much more specific predictions about what we should expect to find at the neuroanatomy level for those layers.
OTOH, PCT makes more predictions about what we should see in large-scale human behavioral phenomena, and those predictions match my experience quite well.
Which is fishy, given there is large literature on interpretation of behavior in terms of control systems. Just look at google scholar. But forming a representative sample of these works with adequate understanding of what they are about would take me, I think, a couple of days, so I’d rather someone else more interested in the issue do that.
There is also a large literature on understanding the brain in terms of chaos theory, cellular automata, evolution, …. , and all of those can shed light on some aspects. The same is definitely true for control systems theory.
The trouble comes when extrapolating this to universal hammers or to the higher cognitive levels; the literature I could find seems mostly about robotics. Admittedly, I did not search very thoroughly, but then again, life is short and if the poster wants to convince me, the burden of proof lies not on my side.
This statement strikes me as false. Evolution says things about what the brain does, and what it ought to do, but nothing about how it does it. Chaos theory and cellular automata are completely unrelated pieces of math. Everything else is either at the abstraction level of neurons, or at the abstraction level of “people like cake”; PCT is the only model I am aware of which even attempts to bridge the gap in between.
Reality does not care who has the burden of proof, and it does not always provide proof to either side.
Neural Darwinism?
In name only, and probably woo.
If I’m only willing to expend a certain amount of effort for gaining understanding of a given aspect of reality, then I won’t listen to any explanation that requires more effort than that. Preparing a good explanation that efficiently communicates a more accurate picture of that aspect of reality is the burden of proof in question, a quite reasonable requirement in this case, where the topic doesn’t appear terribly important.
I don’t see anything ‘false’ about the statement. I simply stated some other fields that have been used to explain aspects of the brain as well, and that, while PCT may be a useful addition, I have seen no evidence yet that it is ‘life changing’.
I enjoy reading LW for all the bright people and new ideas things to learn. In this case however, I was a bit disappointed, mainly because of the self-help-fluff. There are enough places for that kind of material already, I think.
Of course, I cannot demand anything, it’s just some (selfish?) concern for LW’s S/N-ratio.
FWIW, Hawkins’s HTM model (described in “On Intelligence”) makes another fair stab at it, and has many similar characteristics to some of PCT’s mid-to-high layers, just from a slightly different perspective. HTM (or at least the “memory-prediction framework” aspect of it) also makes much more specific predictions about what we should expect to find at the neuroanatomy level for those layers.
OTOH, PCT makes more predictions about what we should see in large-scale human behavioral phenomena, and those predictions match my experience quite well.