(C)1995 Lee Kent Hempfling All Rights Reserved There are some serious misguided meanderings mulling the halls of neuroscience and it is high time the mull is cleared: Intelligence: At MIT Rodney Brooks is heading the Human Cognition Project and building a collection of processors and servo motors in order to mimic the movements of a human and is hoping it will reach the intelligence of a 2 year old. With Brooks claiming that the basic underlying causes of intellect are not necessary to achieve the appearance of it, what is this level of a 2 year old? Are 2 year olds dumber than 5 year olds? Its easy to declare them to be. Then what happens to the tottler as she grows that makes her smarter? Does she grow additional neurons? No. Does she add new intellect centers to her brain? No. Is there anything physical that happens to the 2 year old to make her smarter when she turns 5 years old? No. Then what is Rodney Brooks building to be as intelligent as a 2 year old? Nothing. As Brooks claims the COG project will be as smart as a 2 year old he has committed the most dangerous act of brain study. He has confused knowledge and memory with intelligence. If that had happened in any other field the papers would be flying. If it was claimed that DNA was the cause of mutations science would hang the claimant. It is the vehicle not the cause. All the study around the globe seeking to find the method of DNA mutations proves the point. Brain science confuses the method with the tools. If automotive engineers confused the gasoline with the engine there would be fewer automotive engineers. But Brain science would do just that. The gasoline makes the car move so it must be the engine. The memory provides the raw material to be processed by the brain. It is not the process itself. And since memory is knowledge and experience and the things a two year old adds to become a "smarter" 5 year old then the addition of more memory makes the scientist claim the subject is smarter. How smart a person is, is determined by how memory is processed not by how much memory is there or of what memory it is. So what is Rodney Brooks building? A collection of instructed computers with robotic outputs that will do what it is told to do the way it is told to do it and adapt those ways by the feedback of how well it did something that worked in relation to its preconceived instructions of what a relationship should be and what it should not be. Is Brooks building a conscious machine? NO. Is he building anything remotely intelligent? NO. And the reason is simple: <h3>Intelligence is the process of independently making reason or semblance of order out of seemingly disordered memories and extrapolating a logical determination of what to do with that order.</h3> And that is performed by the design of the brain not by its memory contents.<P> It is not, as the CYC project in Austin, Texas has been doing, determined by how much one knows, rather by how one uses what one knows. And a two year old is just as intelligent at 2 as he will be at 22. He just doesn't know enough to act like a 22 year old. Memory Looking at the surface, all blended together, it would seem that the picture below is one. <IMG SRC="frank.gif"> [IMAGE =insert photo of frankenstein's monster here] It is one scene. One photo. But is it one piece? Of course not. Elementary school topic. Yet while we know the photo is made up of thousands of small pieces that each blend together to make up the whole photo --- science is not so sure about memory. Memory is seen as a whole of events and concepts. So since it <EM>must</EM> be the memory as we see it it must be stored as we see it. Holographic memory. Conceptual Memory. String Memory.. Who knows what else? When actually memory is stored in the same process able medium as the brain uses for everything else. It is made up of hundreds of thousands of tiny unique parts that are not all that different from each other but when connected make up different memories. Just as the black white and grey photo above is made of the same black, white and grey parts as this one: <IMG SRC="mona.gif"> [IMAGE insert photo of monalisa here] Yet no one would say they are the same photo. So why is it so difficult for Brain science to recognize that memory is a collection of tiny parts that together make up a concept or a scene or a thought or a whole of some other shape or form? Because it doesn't come out that way. Brain science for the most part is just like the Congo tribe who see a Polaroid Camera for the first time. The tribe is convinced the box has stolen its souls. It takes quite a bit to convince the tribe the picture is only a reflection of what it has copied and not the real thing. How much will it take to convince Brain science that memory is a reflection and not the real thing? After all, if the brain were to process the real thing perception of reality would change equally for all observers. But it only changes for the brain that does the processing. Since all the rest have their own reflected memories. LEARNING After having detailed the two parts to the process of learning (and of course assuming the reader understands input as being placed there by a receptor of the body), the memory and thinking....what then is learning? Its not all that difficult an answer. Learning is the result of thinking that is committed to memory. Cramming for an examination places learned memory in memory. But once the examination is complete the memory is forgotten. Or is it? And this is where the difficulty of understanding learning actually comes into view. It is perceived that a person has learned something if they can recall it at will. But the brain does not work that way. The brain learns something the instant it is experience by an input receptor. Whether it can be observed to be learned (as in recallable at will) will be determined by how much that learned memory is supported or re-learned. This process occurs because of the method that permits the human to have a concept of time. Memory is placed in storage within the brain in a time sequence. What was put in is before what will be put in. Memory is linear in the brain. The more a certain memory is supported the more time sensitive memory exists on that topic or concept and the more it is accessible. It is this linear movement of memory that gives the human (and all other brain carrying creatures for that matter) a concept of duration, of time, of order. Other creatures with brains simply do not have the third memory back action to allow them to be aware of the event sequence. Humans do. Learning is a matter of repetition. Why? Time sensitive memories connected to more than just the learned event. By that I mean this: Let us say that you learn the initial concept of a number. Take the number 2. You learn this by different quantities of different items and by determining through repetition that the common aspect between all of the different items is their quantity. You learn the concept of 2. So then, each time you reflect on the concept of two your brain also has connected that concept to everything you had experienced as representing two. The more experience representing the concept of 2 the more the concept has relevance to more things and the more memories are cross connected. The more memories are cross connected the more those memories are kept in the forefront of the time line of memory. So each time you witness anything where there are two you are aware of the concept of two without having to ponder on it. The same aspect applies to all other memories. You learn that the brain has a function. It is more than just to cause you to do things. Yet you have a great difficulty in comprehending that the process of the brain could be so detailed and yet so explainable. This is because you have no previously supported memory to make this new memory seem relevant. So you dismiss it. If you had done that as a small child you never would have learned the concept of 2. You didn't know that either until you learned it through repetition and combined relationships. The concept of 2 became normal and accepted to you. Just as this process will do. When you think it though enough.
