On Jun 12, 2008, at 9:25 AM, Steve Richfield wrote:
My assertion was that once you figure out just what it is that the neurons are doing, that the difference between neural operation and optimal operation will be negligible. This because of the 200 million years they have had to refine their operation. Of course, the other argument was that there was just so much that could be done in wetware.
While all computational models are general in theory, they optimize for different kinds of operations in practice such that an algorithm that could be efficiently implemented on one would be nearly intractable on another. We see this kind of impedance matching issue in regular silicon architectures, with different functions/algorithms putting different stresses on the model. I don't doubt that neurons are reasonably optimal implementations of their computing model, but there will be some types of functions that are not very efficient using them. Evolution optimized the architecture for a specific use case given the materials and processes at hand.
J. Andrew Rogers ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
