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scinerds: Ray Kurzweil on Adjusting to Change & Neuroscience Here’s an article I found really interesting on Wired science. The full article is actually ‘on prediction accuracy, adjusting to change and neuroscience’, but I wanted to focus on the bit that struck me as most interesting which was their discussion of the neocortex and brain plasticity, which is essentially learning fresh new things as you get older. I’ve always had a problem with the notion “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, mainly because it came off as something so.. absolute, so definite. So this idea being implied here and in other studies that show this is far from the truth is a refreshing new look at this learning problem. To me, it shows that it doesn’t matter what age you’re in, what matter’s most is how you acquire the information. Here’s an excerpt from the Q & A within the article: Wired: One of the limits of human flexibility is brain plasticity, to keep learning things as you get older. You yourself have excellent plasticity… Kurzweil: I’m actually just writing a book about that, about how the mind works and how to build on it. We have plasticity but our neocortex has a limited capacity, it’s made up of pattern recognisers - I estimate about 300 million of them. People say we only use 10 percent of our brains, actually we use all of it. It’s just not organised that well. The reason that people, as they get older, have more difficulty learning things compared to a child, is that a child has all this virgin neocortex, all these pattern recognisers that can be filled up with information. A newborn has twice as many connections as an adult, so it’s been pruned to reflect the knowledge that the person has gained. We have already filled it up with information; there is a process where we can learn new things but we actually have to abandon these patterns. There’s lot of redundancy, so we can give up some of the redundancy and still remember something, but that’s why memories fade. We do have plasticity but it’s a skill to essentially do “garbage collection” on your neocortex to get rid of patterns that are really no longer of use. Wired: One of the biggest takeaways I got from your original book on the Singularity was that neuroscience is going to be incredibly important. I have friends who work in it now but the technology is still mostly primitive - using giant magnets to temporarily knock out bits of the brain, for example… Kurzweil: No, there’s actually a tremendous amount of information but very few people are trying to create a coherent theory as to what the overall mechanism of the neocortex is. The mind is 80 percent neocortex and the neocortex is remarkably uniform; that’s been known for several decades. It’s basically one algorithim that recognises and remembers a pattern. It predicts that pattern from having seen part of it. And the patterns are organised in hierarchies and thinking is inherently hierarchical, which reflects the natural hierarchy of the world. It’s useful to look at the various findings in neuroscience from that framework. So much neuroscience is reported with no framework at all and no perspective on whether or not it fits together. We need that and we have enough information to create it, and that’s what this book is about. Wired: Given the exponential increase in technology, I know the brain plasticity is there, but still not everyone is able or willing to adapt. Do you think those people will be left behind? Kurzweil: Well, you know, the technology adapts to people, not the other way around. [Mobile] phones and smartphones have reached an incredible mass audience. There’s 5 billion phones, a billion smartphones, and all phones will be smartphones in the next few years. Also, we have ways of getting increased wisdom from crowds even if individuals are limited in their curiosity. The wisdom of crowds is an important factor in the growth of technology. But the neocortex has actually limitations which is why people believe in superstition, have prejudice — there’s nothing inherent in the neocortex that these ideas have to be consistent. For example, some people have an idea about the equality of people as well as having ideas that are prejudicial about certain people. There’s nothing that goes through and makes sure that your ideas are consistent. That’s something we could do with non-biological intelligence. Wired: From a philosophical point of view, that’s similar to Spinoza’s ethics, where he sought to turn all thought into logical propositions. But to do that with all knowledge…? Kurzweil: If we codify knowledge, we do have an opportunity to explore its broad implications and how it all fits together, and whether it’s rational. kurzweil has one fascinating mind.

scinerds:

Ray Kurzweil on Adjusting to Change & Neuroscience

Here’s an article I found really interesting on Wired science. The full article is actually ‘on prediction accuracy, adjusting to change and neuroscience’, but I wanted to focus on the bit that struck me as most interesting which was their discussion of the neocortex and brain plasticity, which is essentially learning fresh new things as you get older.

I’ve always had a problem with the notion “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, mainly because it came off as something so.. absolute, so definite. So this idea being implied here and in other studies that show this is far from the truth is a refreshing new look at this learning problem. To me, it shows that it doesn’t matter what age you’re in, what matter’s most is how you acquire the information. Here’s an excerpt from the Q & A within the article:

Wired: One of the limits of human flexibility is brain plasticity, to keep learning things as you get older. You yourself have excellent plasticity…

Kurzweil: I’m actually just writing a book about that, about how the mind works and how to build on it. We have plasticity but our neocortex has a limited capacity, it’s made up of pattern recognisers - I estimate about 300 million of them. People say we only use 10 percent of our brains, actually we use all of it. It’s just not organised that well. The reason that people, as they get older, have more difficulty learning things compared to a child, is that a child has all this virgin neocortex, all these pattern recognisers that can be filled up with information.

A newborn has twice as many connections as an adult, so it’s been pruned to reflect the knowledge that the person has gained. We have already filled it up with information; there is a process where we can learn new things but we actually have to abandon these patterns. There’s lot of redundancy, so we can give up some of the redundancy and still remember something, but that’s why memories fade. We do have plasticity but it’s a skill to essentially do “garbage collection” on your neocortex to get rid of patterns that are really no longer of use.

Wired: One of the biggest takeaways I got from your original book on the Singularity was that neuroscience is going to be incredibly important. I have friends who work in it now but the technology is still mostly primitive - using giant magnets to temporarily knock out bits of the brain, for example…

Kurzweil: No, there’s actually a tremendous amount of information but very few people are trying to create a coherent theory as to what the overall mechanism of the neocortex is. The mind is 80 percent neocortex and the neocortex is remarkably uniform; that’s been known for several decades. It’s basically one algorithim that recognises and remembers a pattern. It predicts that pattern from having seen part of it.

And the patterns are organised in hierarchies and thinking is inherently hierarchical, which reflects the natural hierarchy of the world. It’s useful to look at the various findings in neuroscience from that framework. So much neuroscience is reported with no framework at all and no perspective on whether or not it fits together. We need that and we have enough information to create it, and that’s what this book is about.

Wired: Given the exponential increase in technology, I know the brain plasticity is there, but still not everyone is able or willing to adapt. Do you think those people will be left behind?

Kurzweil: Well, you know, the technology adapts to people, not the other way around. [Mobile] phones and smartphones have reached an incredible mass audience. There’s 5 billion phones, a billion smartphones, and all phones will be smartphones in the next few years. Also, we have ways of getting increased wisdom from crowds even if individuals are limited in their curiosity.

The wisdom of crowds is an important factor in the growth of technology. But the neocortex has actually limitations which is why people believe in superstition, have prejudice — there’s nothing inherent in the neocortex that these ideas have to be consistent. For example, some people have an idea about the equality of people as well as having ideas that are prejudicial about certain people. There’s nothing that goes through and makes sure that your ideas are consistent. That’s something we could do with non-biological intelligence.

Wired: From a philosophical point of view, that’s similar to Spinoza’s ethics, where he sought to turn all thought into logical propositions. But to do that with all knowledge…?

Kurzweil: If we codify knowledge, we do have an opportunity to explore its broad implications and how it all fits together, and whether it’s rational.

kurzweil has one fascinating mind.

4 months ago

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