A Thousand Narratives. Theory of Cognitive Morphogenesis
Part 6/20. Artificial Neural Networks

“Alan Turing started off by wanting to 'build the brain' and ended up with a computer”
- Henry Markram, The Blue Brain Project

Recently I’ve come to terms with the idea that I have to publish my research even if it feels unfinished or slightly controversial. The mind is too complex (who would have thought), each time you think you get something, the new bit comes up and crushes your model. Time after time after time. So, waiting for at least remotely good answers is not an option. I have to “fail fast” even though it’s not a widely accepted approach among scientists nowadays. 

With

A Thousand Narratives. Theory of Cognitive Morphogenesis
Part 4/20. Neural Darwinism

if the problems are the same, it (evolution) often finds the same solution" 
- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

Neural Darwinism, also known as the theory of neuronal group selection, is a theory that proposes that the development and organisation of the brain is similar to the process of biological evolution. According to this theory, the brain is composed of a large number of neural networks that compete with each other for resources and survival, much like biological organisms competing for resources in their environment.

The main similarity between Neural Darwinism and evolution is that they both involve a process of variation, selection, and adaptation. In biological evolution, organisms with advantageous... (read 443 more words →)

A Thousand Narratives. Theory of Cognitive Morphogenesis. Part 3/20
Simplest to succeed

"Evolution is a tinkerer, not an engineer. It works with what is already there and takes the path of least resistance. 
 It is not always the most efficient solution, but it is the dumbest solution that works." 
 -François Jacob, "The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity"

Reverse engineering complex systems is a tricky problem. Look for example at the design of modern microprocessors, how easy it would be to see the underlying principle of the Turing machine behind all the caches, branch prediction, thread balancing, and the rest. Not that easy I would say. This example might be also applicable... (read more)

A Thousand Narratives. Theory of Cognitive Morphogenesis. Part 2/20
A new way of doing the same thing

"Is an ant colony an organism, or is an organism a colony?" 
- Mark A. Changizi

As of now, there are two kinds of evolution: genetic evolution and memetic evolution. The first one is your usual evolution concerned with "change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations", responsible for all the biological diversity that we know, and happening on the scale of at least hundreds of years. Memetic evolution, strictly speaking, is just a particularly powerful set of adaptations that appeared in primates (and unique only to them), that enabled the accumulation of adaptations during a... (read more)

A Thousand Narratives. Theory of Cognitive Morphogenesis. Part 1/20. Intro

The ultimate goal of this line of research is to gain a better understanding of how human value system operates. The problem I see regarding current approaches to studying values is that we cannot study {values/desires/preferences} in isolation from the rest of cognitive mechanisms, cause according to latest theories values are just a part of a broader system governing behaviour in general. With that you have to have a decent model of human behaviour first to then be able to explain value dynamics.

To get a good theory of the mind you have to meet multiple requirements:

1. A good theory of the mind must span