| The room doesn't become empty by the mere act of closing one's eyes. Closing one's eyes temporarily pauses sensory input from the room to one's brain (through the eyes). To fully pause sensory input to one's brain, one will also need to block the ears (from picking up sounds) and perhaps stand aloof from others in the room (to avoid touching any surfaces or being touched by others). Even if it were possible to block all senses: visual (via the eyes), auditory (via the ears), olfactory (via the nose) and haptic (via the hands) input, this doesn't make the room become empty. Put differently, reality (what is there) and our perception of reality (what we perceive) are two distinct concepts that are easy to conflate. So, for anyone to claim they were successful at removing preconceptions or bias from a neural net, in a way that can be independently verified by others, they will first have to enumerate all forms of bias known to man, then show that all of those biases were avoided in the programming of the neural net. At least, that's how I understand the koan. |