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Comment by nurettin | Hacker News Reader

Articles and generally ideas like this always seem too dismissive. CPUs are nothing like brains because: intricacies. Algorithms can't be applied to literature because: intricacies. It is almost an appeal to emotions to say that rather than saying "ok well we tried to apply these electric constructs and algorithms in order to understand ideas and literature better, we got nowhere and here's exactly why", they are like "it can't be applied oh no it can't our humanity is so distinct and precious there are some lines not to be crossed and here's a million contrived examples as to why".

And to this approach I say, ignorant and cowardly.

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I'd hesitate to even call them intricacies. Billions of years of evolution in biochemistry and multicellular organisms, half a billion years in nervous systems, and over 200 million years in mammalian brains have culminated with about 50 million years of evolution of the primate brain. For every human being that has ever lived, nature has run 10^X continuous brute force "simulations" to arrive at our present civilization, where X is a ridiculously high number that's impossible to even estimate.

Sure, our intelligence allows us to skip a lot of those processes just like it allowed us to escape our gravity well and explore our solar system, but the jump from CPU to brain is like the jump from moon landing to intergalactic travel. The discrete nature of digital electronics alone prevents them from matching neurons because of sampling, let alone their lack of architectural (i.e. neural) plasticity. It's like trying to weld with a q-tip.

That makes it sound all very daunting, but we have a few advantages over nature when it comes to design.

* A single life can produce multiple iterations of a technology. * Current technology speeds up the development of the next iteration.

Nature isn’t limited to intentional design tho, I’m not sure what advantage we have when you have a few 1000’s of people trying to progress technology over their life time vs about 7 billion iterations which are governed by natural selection and that is if you only account for a single species.

Also don’t forget that a single life can also produce multiple iterations of itself over its life span.

Designs are limited by what we understand and can imagine as well as other constraints, nature not so much.

I'd be glad when the upcoming AI winter finally arives; when the self-driving car divisions are all closed; and biologists once again run biology.

The hubris of computer scientists is now boring; and the journalism around this tiresome.

Can't upvote enough. It's easy to dismiss something you don't understand and wreck-less to assume you do. It's attitudes like these articles that led Planck to say, "Science progresses one funeral at a time"

If learning, math or otherwise, doesn't destroy your ego, you can do better. There is no shame in vocalizing uncertainty or a feeling of not understanding. Look at Stephen Hawkings - he had the courage to admit he was wrong and was one of his best critics.

Ego has no place in progress - scientific or otherwise.

Right, and if bernoulli thought that "omg birds evolved a billion years, we can't simply model their wings to levitate a plane, look at those intricate feathers!" or the guy who first suggested CNNs thought "human brain! hundred million years of evolution from early primates! we can't simply use the neuron structure to create anything better, it's all over oh no!" we wouldn't simply be at the point we are standing today. On the shoulders of pretty smart people and their brave ideas.

This is a repetitive concept in modern society, just look at astronomy 100 years ago. People want their science to be more science than it is. If you build your models on faulty foundations, they don't mean anything. Many psychology studies use American college students, as if you can build a model of society in an international context with such a specific subset of people. This is valid criticism.

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