Can The Human Brain Project be saved, and should it be?

I've seen a good number of boondoggles. At the center of each was a personality of such magnetism that people simply fell in line behind them. There are people who have the ability to spout utter nonsense, but to do so with such alpha authority that nearly everyone in the room just glazes over and nods. Whatever it is that our brains take as a signal of alpha status, these people know how to crank it to 11.

When are people going to learn that primate dominance gestures are not a reliable proxy for much else?

I will say that when actual merit and this level of dominance actually align in the same individual, amazing things can happen. But I see no sign that this is more common than would be predicted by the random assortment of traits.

However, I don't think they (Markram et al.) are that naive. In reality, the project is composed of a lot of different subprojects, in simulation, neuromorphic computing, mapping/characterizing mouse and human brains and doing actual neuroscience, theory, applications to human disease, even philosophy and ethics, etc. see: https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/discover/the-project/sub-pr... and their list of publications so far https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/science/publications

It's a huge umbrella for neuroscience funding that they marketed to the EU under the grand vision of simulating the brain. Whether or not this kind of marketing/funding mechanism is an optimal way to do the best science is a very legitimate issue to debate. But the implication (which the HBP brought upon themselves..) that a bunch of crackpots have been given a billion dollars to buy supercomputers and run nonsensical simulations is an oversimplification.

I was curious why there was only neuroscientists and biologists quoted so I went looking for another source. I think this link gives a different, broader overview of the situation and doesn't only focus on personal attacks.

Specifically neuroscience subproject funding was removed... This seems like angry academics that lost funding are trying to derail it through the media to my uneducated observance...

Here's an article about the Human Genome Project from 1990: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/05/science/great-15-year-proj...

"The critics argue that the human genome project has been sold on hype and glitter, rather than its scientific merits, and that it will drain talent, money and life from smaller, worthier biomedical efforts."

"They also doubt that the project can be completed in anything close to its original deadline and budget."

"it will have generated enormous reams of uninterpretable and often useless data"

"it's hyped science"

"Everybody I talk to thinks this is an incredibly bad idea"

"Some critics have begun aggressive letter-writing campaigns"

The exact same arguments that were used 25 years ago to discredit the HGP are now resurfacing to criticize the HBP. And with genome sequencing now below 1000$, that article has become almost laughable.

The main problem with the project though is not the missing scientific data - that just makes it unfeasible for now. What makes it unfeasible in any context is the detail level at which the simulation is supposed to be carried out. This quote from the article expresses it better than I could have done:

Eero Simoncelli, a neuroscientist at New York University. "Would you try to understand the universe by simulating every molecule? What would you have achieved? It’s going to be just as complicated as the real thing and you won’t understand it any better."

That said, the one benefit I could see is that it's a billion+ motivation for folks to think about a hard problem. They likely won't accomplish a 100 billion neuron sim, but 100's to 1000's of people will hopefully be thinking about that goal, trying to decompose it, and producing useful sub-advances. Maybe like the HGP or the LHC or space flight, intense money will lead to enabling technologies that accelerate what is possible.

The other problem is that humans are horrible at predicting scientific progress, even in fields they are comfortable / experts in. Edge scientists may actually suffer from this the worst. So much of life has been devoted to becoming an expert in the field that it becomes more challenging to consider large changes. Even while most major breakthroughs are built from analogies to other fields, and more "simple" every day phenomena. Ex: Relativity, one of the weirdest advances ever, came from thought about trains.

Maybe a billion+ could be spent more wisely, but at least they're spending it. These are the same folks who decry our governments whenever they reduce funding and malign the sciences. Stop complaining and find a way to write the grant, or meet the right folks, or whatever's necessary so you can be a part of the money train and get something useful done.

http://www.openworm.org

It defies understanding why one wouldn't start with a much simpler organism rather than trying to go directly to the human brain. For one thing, you can actually experiment on, e.g., a rat brain in a way that you can't on humans.

The "the next step is the human brain" people have a poor track record. Rodney Brooks tried that once. He'd done a good reactive-controller insect, and then immediately tried to jump to human-brain level with Cog.[2] When he gave a talk at Stanford proposing Cog some years ago, I asked him "Why not try for a mouse next? That might be within reach." He said "I don't want to go down in history as the man who created the world's best artificial mouse". Cog was an embarrassing failure.

The Human Brain Project should be put on hold until OpenWorm works and that technology has been advanced to at least the lizard level. The Human Brain Project is likely to turn into an expensive supercomputer boondoggle.

[1] http://www.openworm.org/ [2] http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/cog/c...

The Human Genome Project is cited as one such example: simultaneously not meeting the hyped goals whilst also being more successful than imagined in other ways. Perhaps what people are missing here is that the value may not be in simulating the brain but rather having the infrastructure on which to run simulations. This likely starts in parts and on a small scale but the infrastructure alone could be incredibly useful for generating new ideas and shortening feedback time.

I'm pretty sure cosmologists would love to make simulations to a molecular precision. They currently simulate gas clouds with supercomputers in order to study the formation of galaxies and the more precise the better.

I'd be very surprised if they come anywhere near reaching their goal of a comprehensive whole-brain simulation, but even if the overall project aim falls short, many of the sub-projects are likely to provide worthwhile outcomes.

For example, structural and functional data generation projects described in there (SP1, SP2 and SP3) sound reasonable and reflect the kinds of topics and techniques that are being researched already. The neuroinformatics (SP5) and medical informatics platforms (SP8), while very ambitious, seem like they could be a tremendously useful resource for linking disparate data sets together into a single, more easily-accessible database.

I can see why many neuroscientists are scoffing at the rather over-hyped grand aim of the project, but that doesn't mean the entire thing should be scrapped. Personally I think that funding comparatively open-ended, long-term, risky research is a good thing. Even if it 'fails', that failure is informative in itself in helping to provide scope for future projects. And it increases the opportunity for serendipitous discoveries.

"Would you try to understand the universe by simulating every molecule? What would you have achieved? It’s going to be just as complicated as the real thing and you won’t understand it any better."

At the very least you would have achieved the ability to rewind and play the universe forward again, which is something that we most certainly can't do with our real universe. You would also have achieved the ability to experiment with and measure the universe with potentially greater precision than we can in the physical world.

Simulation is a tool to help you understand, not understanding itself. I don't think Markram ever said anything to the contrary.