Re: [Heartlogic-dev] brainstorm review

[William L. Jarrold]

On Sat, 13 Mar 2004, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:

> Here is a conversation which occurred privately off-list.  Then we
> decided that it was interesting enough to re-post here.
>
> ---
>

<....>

> >
> > Yah, but it's so hopelessly low-level.  I mean, can you
> > expect more accurate simulations by modelling things at the
> > protein level instead of at the neuron level?
>
> I know they're hopelessly simple compared to neurons, but it seems to me
> that if people spend energy evolving them, vs logic/math models, they
> have the potential to be more similar to brains. Mind you, I think
> neural nets have no nearly long-term potential for things like database
> handling, as compared to logic/math models, but when we're talking about
> modeling the human emotion system, it seems better (to a semi-layman) to
> choose a a model that works in a similar way to neurons.
>
> I say this not to convince you to change research focus (though I am
> interested in why it's wrong, if it is), but to show you my low-level,
> even subliminal, reactions to the whole problem. If my semi-layman
> reactions are more similar to your average audience member than yours
> would be, then maybe that mindset is interesting
>

Yes, good point.  I think we want the semi-layman to be happy.  I think
we want our effort to be a "big tent" effort.  If some neural net
fan wants to come along and get all excited about making their little
neural net black box try to "solve" the mapping between scenario
cues and appraisals, great!  More power to them!  Sure, a NN has the
disadvantage that it can't explain its "deductions" the way a rule
based engine does.  But, let me tell you that groking Cyc's justifications
was not cake either.  Sure, certainly easier than groking a neural
nets weight matrices, but, rule based systems are not the silver
bullets for the problems of cognitive appraisal theory.  As Fred Brooks
implies in The Mythical Man Month, there are no silver bullets.

Bill