Thread: Artificial Neural Networks

Well, psychology just strikes me as being science for pussies.

To understand the thing properly you've gotta take it down to the fundamental level...

And about neural networks; nah, it isn't understood how they perform computations etcetera. With computers we know that it uses binary code to represent numbers, etcetera; we don't know what the 'code' is for the brain. I remember the head of the Blue Brain project saying that the field is waiting for a conceptual breakthrough. Until then it's just groping in the dark...

It's something I plan to help crack, once I've got a degree in maths and maybe a master's in neuroscience.

Originally Posted by Xei

Well, psychology just strikes me as being science for pussies.

Heh. Okay, I'll bite...

What exactly is it about psychology that strikes you as being, ahem, "for pussies?" (Ironically, many of the people currently studying artificial neural networks received their Ph.D.s in cognitive psychology.)

In point of fact, science is a method rather than a predefined set of topics or body of knowledge, and anything can be studied via the scientific method - yes, even people's thoughts, feelings, and behavior. I've found that people who accuse psychology of lacking rigor tend to misunderstand how it is studied. It doesn't help that psychologists are routinely portrayed by the media as headshrinkers who analyze your dreams while you lie facing away from them on a couch doing free associations . Suffice it to say that this is not an accurate view of what psychology is all about. (I wonder if wearing white lab coats and carrying around colorful beakers could improve our reputation? )

Certainly psychology faces a unique set of challenges by studying what is probably the most complex and dynamic thing on the planet, namely the inner life of human beings. I could rather easily make the case that studying things as relatively simple as elements and atoms is "science for pussies" (but I won't ). Rather than becoming dismayed at the difficulty of scientifically studying people's thoughts, feelings, and behavior, I say that we delve in and try to sort things out as best we can. Psychology is a young science and there is so much left to learn - I find it to be very exciting.

Have Neural Networks ever been observed to become cognitive in any way?

Yeah, it's called a brain.

What exactly is it about psychology that strikes you as being, ahem, "for pussies?" (Ironically, many of the people currently studying artificial neural networks received their Ph.D.s in cognitive psychology.)

Everybody knows it isn't a 'proper' science. There's so many unfalsifiable or even meaningless models... there's just no way you can find out how the brain works via studying a tiny subset of its actions and reactions, and in an unthorough way.

And if I could point out; none of these people have so far made any progress in the field.

The only way to do it is to do it properly. It's exactly the same problem that was faced with the 'what is a gene and how does a gene work' issue. There's no way you can work it out by studying entire organisms. To explain it properly, you have to work out what the actual code is, and how it works. That has now been achieved, and the benefits to science have been huge.

Did you say you were a psychologist, by the way? If so I'm not trying to be rude... just honest.

And if I'm just being ignorant perhaps you could clear some stuff up.

Whoops, I meant Artificial Neural Networks...

Originally Posted by Xei

There's so many unfalsifiable or even meaningless models... there's just no way you can find out how the brain works via studying a tiny subset of its actions and reactions, and in an unthorough way.

And if I could point out; none of these people have so far made any progress in the field.

The only way to do it is to do it properly. It's exactly the same problem that was faced with the 'what is a gene and how does a gene work' issue. There's no way you can work it out by studying entire organisms. To explain it properly, you have to work out what the actual code is, and how it works. That has now been achieved, and the benefits to science have been huge.

Regarding unfalsifiable models: this is simply not the case. Certainly it was the case in the early years of psychology (I shudder to think of psychoanalytic and so-called humanistic theories ), but because of this fact, modern psychologists are particularly wary of repeating those old Freudian mistakes, and they go to great lengths to produce theories that derive clear-cut and testable predictions. A classic example from my own field of social psychology is that of cognitive dissonance theory. The full details of dissonance theory are outside the scope of this thread (there are many online resources if you're interested), but essentially it offers real and testable explanations that account for many cases of attitude formation and change. These predictions have been verified via a wide range of different research methods and the theory continues to be expanded upon to this day.

Regarding finding out how the brain works: this is really only a subset of the goals of psychology. Most psychologists take a more holistic approach to understanding human behavior and mental processes. In terms of levels of analysis, behavior may be understood in terms of low-level processes (i.e., the biological level), high-level processes (the representational level, e.g. attitudes, beliefs and other aspects of conscious experience), or the mid-level processes that mediate the two (the computational level, e.g. cognitive processes such as attention filtering). Ideally we wish to examine how we get from one to another and how they all function as a coherent system. In particular, we need more research tying together the biological and computational levels, which is essentially what neural network research (which, like it or not, falls under the realm of cognitive psychology, or at best the "cognitive science" meta-field I mentioned above which contains cognitive psychology) aims to do. We actually do know a fair amount about the biological level in isolation (in terms of neuronal functioning, electrochemical processes, brain structures, etc.), but these facts are largely meaningless without the higher levels of analysis to tie them together and make them relevant.

To understand the entire system, you examine not only the individual aspects of the system, but also how these components function together. As an analogy, we can learn a thing or two about computers from studying the hardware, but we learn a lot more about them from studying the operating systems and various forms of software (higher levels of analysis) and how the two levels interact with each other.

One final thing that I would like point out is that society has already derived very real (albeit often under-appreciated) benefits from psychological inquiry. I won't attempt to catalog them all (in no small part because even I don't fully appreciate the entire range of them), but as examples I will point to business applications such as marketing strategies and negotiating tactics, medical care and therapy (medical decision making, therapeutic techniques), various social and political policies, and legal/courtroom applications just to mention a handful - not to mention the potential benefits to everyday living that we get simply by having a greater understanding of how human behavior and mental processes really work.

Originally Posted by Xei

Did you say you were a psychologist, by the way? If so I'm not trying to be rude... just honest.

And if I'm just being ignorant perhaps you could clear some stuff up.

No offense taken. I am not, strictly speaking, a psychologist. I am wrapping up my undergraduate degree in psychology and am currently in the process of interviewing with several top-tier Ph.D. programs in social psychology. I intend to make a career as a professor and researcher in a sort of gray area of psychology between social, cognitive, and neuroscience. It is possible that a decade from now you and I will be reading each others' publications or even collaborating. (By the way, a Ph.D. is the entry-level degree in the field, so you should plan on going "all the way" if you intend to be a researcher.)

I'm lost on what this actually is... From what I can gather is that it helps predict stocks. Is it like AI? Can it forcast other things too?

Originally Posted by NeoSioType

I'm lost on what this actually is... From what I can gather is that it helps predict stocks. Is it like AI? Can it forcast other things too?

You could say it's a little like AI. A neural network is a system of neurons hooked to each other. The best example? A human brain. An artificial neural network is a model of a neural network typically used in math or computer science. It is most commonly thought of as a method of computing, one that we do not yet fully understand. You can apply it to lots of stuff, but it is best suited to a situation where it will be searching for patterns(like finding patterns in the stock market) or actually learning by creating rules for decision making(like a scalable AI).

Originally Posted by A Roxxor

Have Neural Networks ever been observed to become cognitive in any way?

The short answer is no. But... There are a lot of experiments where it kind of, sort of becomes cognitive in some way. All very technical, but that's where it get interesting and raises all sorts of philosophical questions.

Plus there's all kinds of gray in between ground. Stuff like biological computers, mice with artificial neural nets connected to their brains. Never anything concrete, but the potential is always there, teasing.

You mean like the Jabberwacky program that can link words and emotions together and respond semi intelligently?

Or something different?

Neural Nets are so abstract...

Well, the perfect neural network would simply be a completely accurate model of our brains. That's what is being aimed for. There's no reason to doubt their abilities, unless you think there's something involved in brain activity other than neurons, or maybe if you hold some kind of weird anti-functionalist philosophical belief.

So it would be low-level, then?

As in, just a net of billions of, er, neurons, that exchange information like Memory adresses and when/ how to push bits around?

Because that's basically what our brains do.

Originally Posted by A Roxxor

You mean like the Jabberwacky program that can link words and emotions together and respond semi intelligently?

Or something different?

That's one approach of many. Check out this tree.
http://www.forecastingprinciples.com...ologytree.html

It's a little confusing at first glance, but explains the different approaches quite well. I don't know the specifics of the Jabberwacky program, but you could clearly fit it into one of those categories.