The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence

The neocortex is the part of the human brain that is involved in higher-order functions such as conscious thought, spatial reasoning, language, generation of motor commands, and sensory perception. The researchers at Numenta posit that every part of the human neocortex learns complete models of objects and concepts. The team hypothesizes that grid cell-like neurons exist in every column of the human neocortex. The research team also proposes a new type of neuron called the displacement cell, which acts as a complement to grid cells, and is also located throughout the neocortex. Grid cells are place-modulated neurons that enable an understanding of position. The researchers believe that every cortical column learns models of complete objects by combining input with a grid cell-derived location, then integrating over movements.

- To illustrate this concept, the researchers use a coffee cup as an example. When we see and touch a coffee cup, many columns in the visual and somatosensory hierarchies simultaneously observe different parts of the cup. Every column in every region learns complete models of the cup based on the sensory input (in this example, vision and touch), with an object-centric location of that input, and then integrating over movements of the sensor. The models of the cup are not identical because each model of the cup is learned from a different subset of sensory arrays. As distinct from the commonly held view, where sensory input is processed in a hierarchy of cortical regions, this theory states that the connections are not hierarchical in nature. Instead, the non-hierarchical connections may connect between brain hemispheres, and across modalities, and hierarchical levels. Due to the non-hierarchical connections, inference may occur with movement of the sensors.

According to the researchers, the neocortex has hundreds, if not thousands, of models of each object in the world, and the integration of the observed features occurs in every column, at all levels of the hierarchy, not just at the top of the hierarchy — hence the name, “The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence.” The framework redefines how the human neocortex functions. According to the researchers, the neocortex contains thousands of models functioning not only in hierarchy, but also in parallel. It’s an innovative theory that challenges conventional views and may impact both artificial intelligence and neuroscience in the future.

- More Here

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The neocortex is not like a computer, parallel or otherwise. Instead of computing answers to problems the neocortex uses stored memories to solve problems and produce behavior.

- Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

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It’s important to have machine learning capabilities that are more under the user’s control, rather than relying on these big companies to get access to these capabilities.

- How the Blockchain Could Break Big Tech’s Hold on A.I.

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If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious.

- John Cleese

Wisdom Of The Week

Consider microbes, those single-celled organisms that so vastly outnumber us on planet Earth and which live so plentifully inside our gut. When a typical microbial cell replicates, it copies its chromosomes – the DNA molecules that carry genetic information – then cuts itself in half to form two new cells, giving each a nearly identical copy of its original DNA, a form of vertical inheritance close to cloning. But microbes can also gain copies of genes from totally unrelated microbes through recently discovered and utterly unintuitive processes known as horizontal inheritance. Some microbes will scoop up loose DNA and incorporate it into their own; some will insert their own DNA into nearby microbes by building a tube and passing plasmids into the neighbouring cell; some gain DNA from viruses that act like ferries between microbes, even transporting microbial DNA between organisms of different species. This viral transfer of microbial DNA between species helps to explain the emergence of new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Horizonal inheritance accounts for 8 per cent of the human genome: part of your DNA is actually viral DNA from retroviruses that once upon a time inserted their DNA into human reproductive cells (sperm, eggs), thus becoming heritable. So whenever humans have a child, we’re passing down, via vertical heredity, viral genes inserted sideways into our genomes via horizontal heredity. In fact, we wouldn’t be able to reproduce at all without horizontal heredity. A crucial membrane between foetus and placenta exists thanks to a viral gene from one of those retroviral horizontal transfers. That viral gene makes all mammalian pregnancy possible. So at the level of DNA, humans are actually a mash-up of different species.

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Shine that light a little brighter, zoom out the lens as Zimmer does, and the view gets more weird. If you have a biological sibling, you share at least one parent, which means you are both likely to have large chunks of DNA from that parent in your own genome. With a more distant relative, like a fourth cousin, you have to go further back in the family tree to find a common ancestor – a great-great-great-grandparent. Over the generations, the DNA from that ancestor got cut up – essentially diluted – into smaller and smaller pieces as it made its way down the family tree, mixing with more and more DNA from ancestors that you and your fourth cousin don’t share. Zimmer cites research showing that out of any hundred pairs of third cousins, one pair wouldn’t share any identical segments of DNA. Out of any hundred pairs of fourth cousins, 25 pairs wouldn’t share any identical segments. And yet, we would never say these cousins are not kin. When you look at heredity in terms of genes, using genes alone to define kinship (or even to draw strict boundaries round what it means to be human) starts to seem a little dubious.

The question of who we are related to also bucks intuition on much broader levels of human ancestry. Leaving DNA aside, if we think of our ancestors simply as people who procreated with each other, we soon run up against an inescapable paradox:

We think of genealogy as a simple forking tree, our two parents the product of four grandparents, who are descended from eight great-grandparents, and so on. But such a tree eventually explodes into impossibility. By the time you get back to the time of, say, Charlemagne, you have to draw over a trillion forks. In other words, your ancestors from that generation alone far outnumber all the humans who ever lived. The only way out of that paradox is to join some of those forks back together. In other words, your ancestors must have all been related to each other, either closely or distantly … If you go back far enough in the history of a human population, you reach a point in time when all the individuals who have any descendants among living people are ancestors of all living people.

This is why, as has been repeatedly pointed out in recent years, every European alive today is a descendant of Charlemagne. Such ancestral tree-twisting is hard to keep up with, but it reveals that the obsession with being a ‘direct descendant’ of a celebrated historical figure has more to do with the way certain relationships are culturally valued – for example ‘legitimate’ v. ‘illegitimate’ children – than with science. In a sense, we are all royals, even if we don’t all have royal DNA in our genomes. And yet, we are obsessed with genealogies. ‘By one estimate,’ Zimmer writes, ‘genealogy has now become the second most popular search topic on the internet. It is outranked only by porn.’

- Race doesn’t come into it

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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

- Eric Hoffer

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There are times to stay put, and what you want will come to you, and there are times to go out into the world and find such a thing for yourself.

- Lemony Snicket

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Luck is statistics taken personally.

- Penn Jillette

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As long as museums and universities send out expeditions to bring to light new forms of living and extinct animals and new data illustrating the interrelations of organisms and their environments, as long as anatomists desire a broad comparative basis human for anatomy, as long as even a few students feel a strong curiosity to learn about the course of evolution and relationships of animals, the old problems of taxonomy, phylogeny and evolution will gradually reassert themselves even in competition with brilliant and highly fruitful laboratory studies in cytology, genetics and physiological chemistry. 

- William King Gregory

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The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

- Albert Camus

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You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

- Albert Camus

Wisdom Of The Week

Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Naval Ravikant Chat

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1. Good ideas cause good policies.
2. Good policies cause good growth.

The third law is much less intuitive:

3. Good growth causes good ideas.

- Bryan Caplan, The Idea Trap

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At sixteen, you still think you can escape from your father. You aren't listening to his voice speaking through your mouth, you don't see how your gestures already mirror his; you don't see him in the way you hold your body, in the way you sign your name. You don't hear his whisper in your blood.

- Salman Rushdie, East, West

New Study Explores How Dogs Understand Human Language

A new study by scientists at Emory University and published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience suggests dogs possess a basic understanding of the words they’ve been taught to associate with objects. After training 12 very good dogs of different breeds over the course of two to six months to discern between two toys based on their respective names, the researchers then utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study whether they possessed a basic ability to differentiate between human speech they were taught to remember and new or unfamiliar words.

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Compared with previous research, this study is exciting because it focuses on whether dogs can understand human speech, rather than words combined with intonation and/or gestures, Emory neuroscientist Gregory Berns, a senior author of the study, said in a statement.

“We know that dogs have the capacity to process at least some aspects of human language since they can learn to follow verbal commands,” he said. “Previous research, however, suggests dogs may rely on many other cues to follow a verbal command, such as gaze, gestures and even emotional expressions from their owners.”

- More Here

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- More Here

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I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.

- Abraham Lincoln

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I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.

- Abraham Lincoln

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We live in a historical period characterized by a sharp discrepancy between the intellectual development of man... and his mental-emotional development, which has left him still in a state of marked narcissism with all its pathological symptoms.

- The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Christopher Lash

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The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

- David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

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In 1970, the photocopying giant Xerox established the Palo Alto Research Center, or Parc. Xerox Parc then developed the world’s first personal computer, with a graphical user interface, windows, icons and a mouse. Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple observed developments at Xerox Parc with great interest.  Xerox still makes photocopiers.

- Tim Harford

Wisdom Of The Week

Having taken a couple of main roads that trace China’s journey over the past half-century, it is time to travel down some smaller ones. The first begins with Buddhist temples. During the Cultural Revolution, temples were closed down and some suffered serious damage. In my little town, Red Guards knocked off the heads and arms of every Buddhist sculpture in the local temples, which were then converted into storehouses. Afterwards, the damaged temples were restored and they all reopened, typically with two round bronze incense burners in front of the main hall: the first to invoke blessings for wealth, the second to invoke blessings for security.

When I visited temples in the 1980s, in the first censer I would often see a huge assembly of joss sticks, blazing away furiously, while in the second, a paltry handful would be smoking feebly. In those days China was still very poor, and, as most people saw it, when you didn’t have money, being safe didn’t amount to much. Now China is rich, and when you go into a temple you see joss sticks burning just as brightly in the security censer as in the wealth one – it is when you are rich that security acquires particular importance.

In China today, Buddhist temples are crowded with worshippers, while Taoist temples are largely deserted. A few years ago, I asked a Taoist abbot: “Taoism is native to China, so why is it not as popular as Buddhism, which came here from abroad?” His answer was short: “Buddhism has money and Taoism doesn’t.”

His explanation, although it rather took me aback, expresses a truth about Chinese society: money, or material interest, has become the main motivating force. In the 1980s, there was a series of student protests in China, culminating in the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989, when not just students but city dwellers all across the country joined the rallies. Back then, the demonstrations were largely motivated by concern for the fate of the nation and a desire to see democratic freedoms put in place. Today, people still demonstrate, but on a very small scale, and these demonstrations – “mass incidents” in official parlance – are completely different from the protests in the 1980s. Protests today are not geared towards transforming society – they are simply designed to protect the material interests of the group involved.

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What is the situation back where the farmers came from – the houses in the countryside now expropriated but yet to be demolished? Peasants often have dogs to protect the home and guard the property. When peasants move to the cities, they no longer need guard dogs, so they leave them behind. And so you see poignant scenes in those empty, weed-infested farm compounds, as those abandoned dogs, all skin and bones, faithfully continue to perform sentry duty, now rushing from one end of the property to the other, standing on a high point and gazing off into the distance, their eyes burning with hope, longing for the past to return.

I’m reminded of a joke that’s been doing the rounds. Here is what’s unfair about this society:

The pretty girl says: “I want a diamond ring!” She gets it.The rich guy says: “I want a pretty girl!” He gets her.I say: “I want a shower!” But there’s no water.

That last situation, I myself have experienced. In my early years, more often than not, water would cut off just as I was having a shower – sometimes at the precise moment when I had lathered myself in soap from head to toe. All I could do then was hammer on the pipe with my fists, at the same time raising my head so that the final few drops of water would rinse my eyes and save them from smarting; as for when the water would come on again, I could only wait patiently and hope heaven was on my side. Back then, nobody would have seen water stoppages at shower-time as a social injustice, because in those bygone days, there were no rich guys, and so pretty girls didn’t get diamond rings and rich guys didn’t get pretty girls.

It is often said that children represent the future. In closing, let me try to capture the changing outlook of three generations of Chinese boys as a way of mapping in simple terms China’s trajectory over the years. If you asked these boys what to look for in life, I think you would hear very different answers.

A boy growing up in the Cultural Revolution might well have said: “Revolution and struggle.”

A boy growing up in the early 1990s, as economic reforms entered their second decade, might well have said: “Career and love.”

Today’s boy might well say: “Money and girls.”

- ‘Human impulses run riot’: China’s shocking pace of change

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There's a sadness to the human condition that I think music is good for. It gives a counterpoint to the visual beauty, and adds depth to pictures that they wouldn't have if the music wasn't there.

- Mike Figgis

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Routine in an intelligent person is a sign of ambition.

- W.H. Auden

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It is hard to write a beautiful song. It is harder to write several individually beautiful songs that, when sung simultaneously, sound as a more beautiful polyphonic whole. The internal structures that create each of the voices separately must contribute to the emergent structure of the polyphony, which in turn must reinforce and comment on the structures of the individual voices. The way that is accomplished in detail is ... ‘counterpoint’.

- John Rahn

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The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment. This is the way in which opinions are held in science, as opposed to the way in which they are held in theology. The decisions of the Council of Nicaea are still authoritative, but in science fourth-century opinions no longer carry any weight. In the USSR the dicta of Marx on dialectical materialism are so unquestioned that they help to determine the views of geneticists on how to obtain the best breed of wheat, though elsewhere it is thought that experiment is the right way to study such problems. Science is empirical, tentative, and undogmatic; all immutable dogma is unscientific. The scientific outlook, accordingly, is the intellectual counterpart of what is, in the practical sphere, the outlook of Liberalism.

- Philosophy and Politics, Bertrand Russell

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I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter's evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream... I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people's tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting.

- Mark Twain

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There is only one constant preoccupation. I have throughout been anxious to discover how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.

- My Philosophical Development, Bertrand Russell

What I've Been Reading

Another way of putting this is: the risk we should most fear is not the risk we easily imagine. It is the risk that we don't.

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There is another way to think of John MacWilliams's fifth risk: the risk a society runs when it falls into the habit of responding to long term risks with short-term solutions. "Program management" is not just program management. "Program management is the existential threat that you never really even imagine as a risk. 

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis.

Please read this book ! That would a good starting point to understand and fix the "strange" relationship between US government and it's citizens. And that would also be initial step to kill that ideologue in you.

• Here is the where the Trump administrations willful ignorance plays a role. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it's better never to really understand the problems. There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview. 
• At any given time in America, there are lots of seriously smart people with bold ideas that might change life as we know it - it may be the most delightful distinguishing feature of our society. The idea behind ARPA-E was to find the best of these ideas that the free market had declined to finance and make sure they were given a chance. 

We don't just have markets. We have values. 

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For leaders, the humility to admit and own mistakes and develop a plan to overcome them is essential to success. The best leaders are not driven by ego or personal agendas. They are simply focused on the mission and how best to accomplish it.

- Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink

Wisdom Of The Week

As it turns out, I was right about one thing – to call what happens at midlife “a crisis” is bullshit. A crisis is an intense, short-lived, acute, easily identifiable, and defining event that can be controlled and managed.

Midlife is not a crisis. Midlife is an unraveling.

By definition, you can’t control or manage an unraveling. You can’t cure the midlife unraveling with control any more than the acquisitions, accomplishments, and alpha-parenting of our thirties cured our deep longing for permission to slow down and be imperfect.

Midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:

I’m not screwing around. All of this pretending and performing – these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt – has to go. Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy and lovable, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever. Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through your veins. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.

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I put up the fight of my life, but I was totally outmatched. The universe knew exactly how to use vulnerability and uncertainty to bring down this perfectionistic shame researcher:  a huge, unexpected wallop of professional failure, one devastating and public humiliation after the next, a showdown with God, strained connections with my family, anxiety so severe that I started having dizzy spells, depression, fear, and the thing that pissed me off the most – grace. No matter how hard or far I fell, grace was there to pick me up, dust me off, and shove me back in for some more.

It was an ugly street fight and, even though I got my ass kicked, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. There was a significant amount of pain and loss, but something amazing happened along the way – I discovered me. The real me. The messy, imperfect, brave, scared, creative, loving, compassionate, wholehearted me.

Maya Angelou writes, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” I’ve always honored the power of story. In fact, I believe so strongly in their power that I’ve dedicated my career to excavating untold stories and bringing them up to the light. In some miraculous way, I feel as if this midlife unraveling has taught me – in my head and my heart – how to be brave. I’m still not good at surrendering or “living in the question,” but I am getting better. I guess you could say I’ve graduated to “writhing in the question.” Not exactly Zen, but it is progress.

- Bene Brown

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Friedberg hadn't known that people bought less hummus when it rained but, then, he was learning all sort of odd stuff about people's exposure to weather. Salad places did much better on sunny days, coffee shops did not.

- The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

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You can see it in stark, comic terms. What are Bezos and Musk doing? Trying to flee to Mars. What’s Gates doing? Recommending you books to read, and trying to save the world with charity. LOL — how ironic. These are different forms of freedom from capitalism. Maybe on Mars, we can build a better world. Maybe through ideas and philanthropy, we can solve the problems that corporations can’t. All the capitalists I see are trying to win freedom from capitalism, in one way or another. Aren’t they?

- If the Point of Capitalism is to Escape Capitalism, Then What’s the Point of Capitalism?

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Depth is the knowledge of how, breadth is the knowledge of why.

- Mike Birkhead

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The men on the trading floor may not have been to school, but they have Ph.D.’s in man’s ignorance.

- Michael M. Lewis, Liar's Poker

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The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

- Mark Twain