Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making | Hacker News Reader

Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making

phys.org

38 pointssfrechtling35 comments

I hope someone can provide a deeper indication to what is going on - on first reading it looks like the iron bar is simply recording past events. The observer would be the one who decides to use this information to extrapolate into future events - the iron bar just sitting there.

Exactly this, the bar doesn't move towards the machines by itself, its just a tool a sentient being is using to record data. Isn't the proposition analogous to proposing that a typewriter is able to compose a novel or that a violin is capable of playing a song? Neither the violin, the typewriter nor the iron bar work without a sentient human using them.

It comes across as a brilliantly absurd joke at first, though I suspect that to be a case of poor translation and an even poorer choice of analogy.

I see this pertaining to quantum physics/computing. I think it's trying to posit: "fluctuations in physically-coupled systems (tug-of-war dynamics) can be used to reliably and efficiently infer state/logic when the initial, discrete distribution is known."

To break that down a bit...

- They describe tug-of-war dynamics as a sort of "rigid physical coupling," and briefly allude to practical applications, stating that they've implemented this dynamic in "... quantum dots, single photons and atomic switches."

- They are using a poor example as the conceptual nature of the 'slot machines' and iron bar seems irrelevant -- it's just an analogy for a "measurable state" represented in a physically-coupled construct.

As for why it's relevant, it seems to be the cornerstone of an alternate paradigm to computing that when scaled down (to nanotechnology and quantum particles) can allow physical systems to represent logic and state without electrical transistors. That would appear to have application in every field from medicine to defense (smart materials, targeted drug delivery, et. al).

The breakthrough has 0 to do with the lovely "iron bar," and instead seems to be in their method of physical coupling, allowing them to represent binary switches reliably in the physical realm at quantum scale.

Then again...

"Other than this fluctuation, we added another fluctuation to our model. The important point is ... fluctuations."

http://i.imgur.com/bHFwiof.jpg

It's a weird analogy, but it makes sense in the context of the paper's authors' statement:

> "The most important implication that we wish to claim is that the proposed scheme will provide a new perspective for understanding the information-processing principles of certain lower forms of life," Kim, from the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics' National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, told Phys.org. "These lower lifeforms exploit their underlying physics without needing any sophisticated neural systems."

Iron Bar for President!

I think it's a very weird analogy, and a terrible title for an article on phys.org.

I heard that on Facebook, more people "liked" a pickle than the band Nickleback. So maybe an iron bar for President isn't so far fetched...

The decision is still made by the human evaluator(s). (Presumably, to declare one slot machine the "easiest".)

Terrible headline.

Are they even suggesting that the bar is somehow affected by the output of (perhaps) coins from the slot machine... electromagnetic interactions? Or is the slot machine example simply a thought experiment? I suspect we may be attempting to process bad input here...

I read the article again. The researchers simply seem to be saying that what seem like complex decisions can be made in simple organisms as long as the ability to increment a "counter" when a certain condition occurs is possible. The slot machine example actually requires a "counter" that can increase and decrease when opposing conditions occur. This seems very obvious...

It is obvious. We call them machines.

Is this a thought experiment or something, or an early April fool's joke?

Instead of 'decision-making', they could have said 'computation'. Does that make it less ridiculous? I think it's a little interesting.

It's interesting, but I'm at a loss as to what's even remotely new about it. Unless the computer that you typed this on is very, very different from mine that I'm typing this on, there isn't any living components in it, yet it is "computing" and "deciding" quite a bit. There's a ton of natural processes that incorporate some feedback element and can be said without much stretching to be doing a computation. We're beyond science on that matter, we're decades if not centuries into engineering with these facts. (It's not hard to say a steam engine is "computing" parameters to keep itself running, for instance, and h

Maybe it's just my bias as a computer scientist, but I would never dream that they would find anything but what they found. Having read the paper, they're basically proposing alternate models of computations, but computer scientists have hardly been blinded by transistors; proposing alternate models is a hobby, and there's at least one large one getting a lot of study to the point that I expect everyone will just understand the acronym without my expansion, QC. We've computed with water (both macroscopic and microfluidics), mechanical machinery (i.e., cogs not transistors), chemistry, DNA, analog circuitry, and light, and I'm sure that's not a complete list. We've hypothesized computing with mechanical nanotechnology, von Neuman replicators (up to and including converting entire astronomical bodies), black holes, closed timelike curves, and the fundamental structure of spacetime itself. If this was proposed as a Master's thesis in computer science, the advisor would advise the student to do something less pedestrian.

That doesn't make this paper "bad" in some absolute sense, but I'm surprised it's publishable, since for better or worse that incorporates a certain amount of novelty in its criteria.

I'm also surprised this is publishable, particularly in NJP, as it is a respectable journal and their scope explicitly states:

"An article must meet the highest scientific quality standards, both in terms of originality and significance, and the research results should make substantial advances within a particular subfield of physics."

Science is composition.

We build a bit, we test, if it's solid, we build a bit more. We don't need to come up with hypothetical black hole computers.

The paper and the concept of TOW dynamics has been referenced in http://www.nature.com/articles/srep13253 which shares one of the authors and is interesting in a different way.

I get tired of people saying things that aren't exciting enough shouldn't be published. It's not the exciting things that make the breakthroughs, it's understanding a bit more about the things we've always figured are obvious. To me this is more interesting than some hypothetical black hole computer. Sure it's not blowing me away.

It's just a block. A little block. Other ideas can choose to use that block or not. I haven't seen that system of tug-of-war dynamics described before. It seems solid, so why not describe it?

Or does it need to be antimatter hoverboards to be worth publishing?

Read my post more carefully before leaping to conclusions, please. You appear to have been blinded by some words and failed to read through them properly. You're trying to lecture me about how science works, when in fact you're the one who is being quite wrong about it. Especially re-read my last sentence, carefully.

My idea was that this choice for words might have been culturally influenced. Take note that this research is performed in Japanese institutions by Japanese authors. A western author, Koren (author on Wabi-sabi, a phenomenon in japanese culture), makes note of how prevalent non-dualism is in Japanese culture and tradition. He descibes non-dualism as:"More spiritually, the idea of non-dualism is a relationship to reality that proposes that everything is inextricably connected and alive, even inanimate objects."

I can see how someone with such views would find it logical to attribute decision-making to objects or find it a sensible choice of words. It doesn't really change the conclusions of the research anyway.

After reading the original publication, the analogy to an iron bar is just confusing the point.

The article states: "Every time the outcome of a play of machine A ends in a reward, the bar moves to the left a specific distance, and every time the outcome ends in no reward, the bar moves to the right a specific distance. The same goes for a play of machine B, but the directions of the bar movements are reversed. After enough trials, the bar's total displacement reveals which slot machine offers the better winning probability." There's no locomotion reinforcement which can apply to the iron bar.

Something (either a physical mechanism or a guiding hand) needs to move the bar. Now the math of problem solving seems to still work out, but the mechanism of locomotion needs to be included in the system to get a proper description of the entropy at play.

Not to be too thick but wouldn't it seem like a banal point if instead of "iron bar" we were to say "measurement dial" and instead of "specific distance" we say "number of units on dial" and if instead of "left" or "right" we said "positive" or "negative".

So if we then say "after enough trials, the measurement dial's positive or negative reading tells us which slot machine offers the better winning probability", would that still seem like something worth publishing a paper on?

Or have I just totally missed the point?

Next up, digital arrows next to headlines is capable of decision-making (removing physicality).

I'm sorry but this sounds more like a way of measurements and calculations than actual decision-making, as that's been decided by the maker or user of the object.

Analog computing by ascribing meaning to motion, and cognizant of directions (in this case); while the bar may be 'just sitting there', an embedded device within, imbued with a human way ('intelligence') of 'reasoning' about lateral movements would be able to support decision making. Take another analogous case of a twig moving in a brook: the twig doesn't 'need to know' the parameters of water flow in a brook as humans do, to determine which way to turn and tumble as it meanders through the water; it need not care about 'calculations' of water pressure, the topology of the ground beneath, obstructions in its path, spin induced by local eddy currents and what not to merrily cruise along; from a human perspective, an immense amount of computation (should) be involved. Yet, as the water rolls along, equations of continuity needn't be solved, no moments need be calculated, as pure physical properties and forces do the trick. Lot to learn from analog computing: digital computing is after all, a subset of it at the electronic level, could one say? :-)

This is really about inference, and less about "decision-making."

First, the bar is has a action-response rule-based mechanism based on the input of winning or losing combined with which direction it came from right or left. That's it.

An externality can then infer that the bar has made a decision, but of course, the bar has made no such decision.

This is still useful, but it's overblown to call this "decision-making" outside of decisions made exclusively within a strict framework of primitive rules. That said, many fundamental human reactions and decisions follow a pretty strict framework of primitive rules. That's why most people fail to grok the ladder of inference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJLqOclPqis

Add a couple more iron bars and you may recreate the 1938 Zuse Z1 [1]. Not sure what's the news here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer)

Link to journal article referenced: http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/17/8/083023/

So, basically, a small set of rules for keeping score over time works?

The simplest Braitenberg machine to date?

tl;dr: the iron bar prefers the taste of Coke to Pepsi, and wants to "make America great again".

Aw, they were about to show a close-up of the bar!

Reading the article, it appears to me the researchers are talking about harnessing physical fluctuations in a process to achieve an outcome similar to some sort of computational modeling of the same process.

I don't think they're literally saying the iron bar is making a decision, and I'm a little surprised that would have flown over the heads of most of the readers here.

Yeah, but that is what the title says (that the iron bar is making a decision). It seems like the title is completely out of whack with the contents of the article.

I totally agree. However I would hope most people can see past a poorly worded title.

I really dont understand this...

This feels structurally similar to Searle's "Chinese room" argument.

True, but simpler in scope. Searle's Chinese Room is paradoxical because it involves trying to combine mechanical processes (of rote symbol-copying) with supposedly higher-order thinking (speech/understanding).

But the "decision-making" here is dubious. If Searle had written an "Iron Bar Gambling Room" argument, I bet most people would have rejected the notion that the room was "deciding" anything. This is little different from light-sensitive cells in primitive eyespots accumulating energy from photons to "decide" the direction of the sun.

In short, this paper is what happens when people chase the Minimum Publishable Unit for their career.

This is just called Trend Following.

so, side channel analysis? Or am I missing the point?

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