{"id":31,"date":"2003-07-04T11:37:51","date_gmt":"2003-07-04T02:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/07\/04\/neurons-and-neutrons\/"},"modified":"2006-06-25T13:09:23","modified_gmt":"2006-06-25T11:09:23","slug":"neurons-and-neutrons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/07\/04\/neurons-and-neutrons\/","title":{"rendered":"Neurons and Neutrons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Late night discussion subjects with Harold yesterday (lengthily and passionately argued over for hours until 4 this morning)&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Among many others, we went over (less and less focused and informed, as the discussion kept advancing):<\/p>\n<p>1\/ Is there any point in using an appropriately trained neural network for type-specific music compression over a regular algorithm?<\/p>\n<p>2\/ Is any task performed by a neural network more or less isomorphic to an interpolation function?<\/p>\n<p>3\/ Is any given neural network <b>always<\/b> replaceable by a definable iterative algorithm?<\/p>\n<p>4\/ Is the brain replaceable by an iterative algorithm?<\/p>\n<p>5\/ Is neuron transmission a discrete discontinuous function?<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nIn a nutshell, my original stand was more or less:<br \/>\nYES &#8211; NO &#8211; NO &#8211; NO &#8211; YES<br \/>\nHarold&#8217;s being of course precisely the opposite&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Of course, neither of us really managed to convince the other, but we got to exchange some interesting viewpoints and left us both with a lot of interrogations in these areas&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>As for 1\/, I still think there is (among many other uses) a proven point into using a trained NN to define what is acceptable loss of quality within certain ranges of frequencies. Where a regular algorithm would typically only be able to deal with clearly defined type of music, a NN should have much better chances with anything slightly out of the ordinary. True, however, that this is not necessarily a NN-only task, just one where it would do much better than any algorithms, imho.<\/p>\n<p>2\/ was much more of a debate between us. Harold&#8217;s point being that given x inputs, y outputs, one can always define an interpolation function doing about as good as the network. Which I strongly disagreed with. First because continuity between values is far from granted for the output of a NN by its own nature. Second, because, even assuming this would hold for basic NN (perceptron, etc) it definitely does not as soon as we include more advanced type of NN: back propagation and &#8220;memory&#8221; neurons for example&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>which got us directly into the more general:<\/p>\n<p>3\/ without going too deep into the mathematical theories behind that, it&#8217;s rather easy to fathom the difficulties to integrate things like recursion and feedback into a &#8220;regular&#8221; interpolation function.<\/p>\n<p>Using mutual recursion of a wildly complex nature ought to do the trick theoretically, was harold&#8217;s valid point. mine being that we are then basically talking about a form of NN.<br \/>\nAnd I think that&#8217;s the bottom line of all our discussion centered around NN and computers: one can&#8217;t ignore the fact that computers are Turing machines, hence iterative algorithms implementation (or am I missing something), BUT we also know that proof of existence is far from proof of definability&#8230;<br \/>\nactually, I&#8217;d be seriously tempted to say that there&#8217;s way to formally define a computer as a sufficiently strong consistent system and then unleash godel&#8217;s minions of logical hell on it&#8230; but I&#8217;ll gladly admit this is a little bit beyond my realm of mathematical ease.<\/p>\n<p>4\/ well of course, there&#8217;s too many unknowns with the brain to give anything else than wildly random guesses.<\/p>\n<p>However, <i>some<\/i> of what applies to a computer ought to be of <i>some<\/i> relevance for the brain&#8230; That is, assuming you consider the brain to be functioning somewhat digitally&#8230;<br \/>\nWhich breaks down essentially to:<\/p>\n<p>5\/ is neuronal communication essentially digital or analogic ?<br \/>\nThis one is definitely my firm ground, as I do think there&#8217;s enough facts backing this matter: although there is some chemical steps that can take fairly continuous values, the electrical threshold involved in the neuronal communication process should insure you get discrete values within the system.<br \/>\nTo me, the mere presence of <b>one<\/b> &#8220;digital filter&#8221; is enough to liken the whole communication process to a digital one. am i missing something there?<\/p>\n<p>It is interesting to see overall, how even the simplest neuronal architecture seem able to produce layer after layer of abstraction up to a point where the link seems non-existent. An example of a seemingly iterative process practically impossible to reproduce&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>discussion on AI, neuronal network and biological neurons&#8230; a few questions and attempts to answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-too-much-caffeine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}