Shannon and the brain..

From what I've read, current theory is that hominid intelligence is partially derived from having to keep a mental map of the relations involved in the large social groups that we exist in - mating is certainly a part of that, but not the only part. Of course, chimpanzees and bonobos also have complex social structures and haven't shown any interest in designing electronics over the past several million years, so there's obviously additional factors; one of the events that may have given hominid intelligence the edge is the opening of the Mediterranean about 5 million years ago, which dried out Africa and forced early hominids into the savannah - a much more dangerous place. As the saying goes, "We didn't leave the forest, the forest left us." It is known that soon after this period of drying 5 million years ago there was a wild amount of hominid speciation.

There are, however, places in sub-Saharan Africa where you can find thousands of well crafted yet unused stone tools littering the ground that accumulated over tens of thousands of years. It's believed that the crafting of these tools did serve some kind of mate-attraction purpose, which if true implies that there were indeed periods of remarkable intellectual stagnation induced by the forces of sexual selection.

I don't think that's really the case... there are many machine-vision and machine-listening applications that are used by commercial and military interests every day. Where I once worked we were selling neural-network-based semiconductor wafer defect classifiers and that alone was bringing in tens of millions per year -- I have to believe the overall industry is easily in the billions of dollars.

That being said, I would agree that neural networks are often an *overhyped* technology.

---Joel

Yamaha has a pretty neat technology that uses a neural network for pitch to MIDI conversion; to reduce conversion latency on low frequency notes a neural network is used to identify a note's frequency before a full cycle has elapsed.

"PeterD" "Phil Allison"

Courts rely all the time on the sworn testimony from credible witnesses - while defence lawyers make their livings casting doubt on any uncertainties in witness's recollections.

Also, where there are several witnesses to the same events and those witness's recollections all agree - a court will accept that it is most likely the truth as the chance that independent witness all make the exact same errors is very small indeed.

Where two witnesses disagree about a matter and there is no way to resolve the disagreement, then that evidence is usually ruled out of the case.

The classic example of the unreliability human memory is when several witnesses see the same accident happen and produce different versions of events - sometimes alarmingly different. There are many factors that bring this about - fallible memory being only one.

The main reason is that the human brain is NOT a recording machine.

..... Phil

Isn't this obivous? Without such a strong drive to procreate any species would quickly cease to exist. Just about every thing can be releated in terms of that. Some men work hard to make lots of money because money is power and power gives them pussy. Well, at least it used to work that way. In our society today it seems that most of those things that have driven us to procreate have taken on a whole new meaning. i.e., we are evolving away from the need to procreate because our society has such a handle on it. i.e, there are more important things our species has a need for now than to procreate. In a sense the need to procreate/evolution/survival of the fittest is only needed at the start of a species lifespan or when the species nears extinction. All humans are pretty much the product of the strongest, smartest, sexiest that our species had to offer at the time when those things were needed for the species to grow and sustain itself.

I think we are now in the stages were the brain is being rewired to deal with those things our collective species deems required for survival(since very little is actually required now we are free to let our "animalistic intincts" manfest them however they do).

Some recent research I saw referenced indicated that each synapse has as many as 100 active sites, and that these sites might also have differential function... which pushes the number to 10**16.

Also: "The Brain That Changes Itself" is fascinating reading about the links between brain structure and capability, and neural plasticity. Highly recommended.

Clifford Heath.

A petabyte of slow memory. Should be common on PCs in about 15 years

Evidence seems to show that the brain records *everything*: sight (full color), sound, touch, kinesthetics, etc & etc full time from before birth to death. So for a 95 year-old, that is a hell of a lot of data for Shannon to miss.

That would seem to be the case, and that compression scheme seems to be non-lossy. "We have not yet begun to understand" is a very gross understatement.

neuron.

THAT is a very interesting theory and very worthy of research - as long as no damage is done to a person during that research.

Proof??

Concerning models, it is known that a person can visualize an accurate model of (say) rotating machinery for generation of electrical power (say AC power), and test it to destruction in various ways..and that the results of that mental visual model is 100 percent *accurate*.

Ain't gonna happen.

Art, Music, etc..

Maybe none of us can tunnel thru a wall, but if you believe the Bible, Jesus walked thru a door.

You are absolutely incorrect. It has been proven that the brain is a perfect recorder of all sensory precepts and makes no errors. All of the problems stem from internal, inaccessible blocking factors that vary between individuals.

lossless storage?

cops carry and use notebooks.

lossless storage? possibly he was counting neurons instead of synapses?