No, I haven't been smokin' any wacky tobacy. Instead, I was having a long talk with my son Eddie, about self-organization theory. This is *his*proposal:
He suggested that I construct a "simple" NN that couldn't work without self organizing, and make dozens/hundreds of different neuron and synapse operational characteristics selectable ala genetic programming, put it on the fastest computer I could get my hands on, turn it loose trying arbitrary combinations of characteristics, and see what the "winning" combination turns out to be. Then, armed with that knowledge, refine the genetic characteristics and do it again, and iterate until it *efficiently* self organizes. This might go on for months, but self-organization theory might just emerge from such an effort. I had a bunch of objections to his approach, e.g. Q. What if it needs something REALLY strange to work? A. Who better than you to come up with a long list of really strange functionality? Q. There are at least hundreds of bits in the "genome". A. Try combinations in pseudo-random order, with each bit getting asserted in ~half of the tests. If/when you stumble onto a combination that sort of works, switch to varying the bits one-at-a-time, and iterate in this way until the best combination is found. Q. Where are we if this just burns electricity for a few months and finds nothing? A. Print out the best combination, break out the wacky tobacy, and come up with even better/crazier parameters to test. I have never written a line of genetic programming, but I know that others here have. Perhaps you could bring some rationality to this discussion? What would be a "simple" NN that needs self-organization? Maybe a small "pot" of neurons that could only work if they were organized into layers, e.g. a simple 64-neuron system that would work as a 4x4x4-layer visual recognition system, given the input that I fed it? Any thoughts on how to "score" partial successes? Has anyone tried anything like this in the past? Is anyone here crazy enough to want to help with such an effort? This Monte Carlo approach might just be simple enough to work, and simple enough that it just HAS to be tried. All thoughts, stones, and rotten fruit will be gratefully appreciated. Thanks in advance. Steve ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
