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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: 100 Billion Neurons Nonsense
Organization: The Armory
Date: Sat, 2 Jul 1994 13:06:21 GMT
Message-ID: <CsBDqr.L30@armory.com>
References: <eZ1Noc4w165w@sfrsa.com> <2uupb0$kc7@orion.cc.andrews.edu> <Cs8BEJ.BJv@armory.com> <1994Jul1.135542.1@aurora.alaska.edu>
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In article <1994Jul1.135542.1@aurora.alaska.edu>,
 <ffjjd@aurora.alaska.edu> wrote:
>In article <Cs8BEJ.BJv@armory.com>, rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz) writes:
>> In article <2uupb0$kc7@orion.cc.andrews.edu>,
>> Todd Freeman <freeman@andrews.edu> wrote:
>>>Another point that should be brought up is that we still do not even
>>>understand the neuron itself let alone it's interactions. Just lately in
>>>Discover Magazine (forgot which issue) they had an article about the
>>>quantum mechanics of a neuron and its relationship to other neurons.
>>>Reading this article it is hard to think of a way to explain at all how
>>>neurons work...yaa sure signal in signal out with weights attached but
>>>it seems that neurons have dicision making capabilities internal to
>>>themselves which can decide other decisions not directly seen in the
>>>output of the neuron.
>>>Todd
>> -----------------
>> Yeah But: If a brain's function were governed by tiny random things that
>> caused much bigger things, (chaos theory), then you could bump into
>> somebody and change their religion!!! I don't think you can get "robust"
>> out of your principles of scale there!
>> 
>> In fact, I'd bet that the size of a synapse is just insurance and slop in
>> the logical certainty of a weighted value, and that it doesn't have to be
>> anywhere near that close. Otherwise your lousy diet could make you totally
>> insane!!!
>> 
>> Nawh, evolution is not a planning builder!!!
>> We are! We can soon do a MUCH better job than nature ever did!
>> -Steve Walz    rstevew@armory.com
>> 
>I heard that beneath the thermodynamics of the jet engine that there
>are little molecules that are making decisions in the quantum world.
>Gee, and I always thought the pilot was flying the plane.
------------------------------------
The point is whatever their little decisions ARE, they are NOT interfering
very often with the macrofunction of the plane to any significant degree.
And that means they are not in the loop of decision for the plane!
Sometimes the atomic view is just not important to the intended purpose.
So is that also true with computers and likely with brains. To get
robustness in a system, you don't permit its threshholds of alteration to
approach the chaotic levels of the system's total action. If every little
"peep" put out on a neuron's axon that didn't make it to fire a synapse
were important, then I could likely screw up someone's mind with a child's
magnet!!!!
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

