Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by foolrush 1125 days ago
The issue is that the definition of “statistics” is anchored in a magnitude of frequency of glyphs. The “information” is fabricated in this regard, pulled up out of the ether, and by decree christened as “meaning”.

Numbers carry no meaning, nor do the magnitudes arbitrarily assigned to meaning. The map is not the territory.
2 comments
naasking 1124 days ago
> The “information” is fabricated in this regard, pulled up out of the ether, and by decree christened as “meaning”.

No, not fabricated, but inferred from a structured corpus of information generated by other semantic processes (humans).

> Numbers carry no meaning, nor do the magnitudes arbitrarily assigned to meaning.

Prove it.

> The map is not the territory.

Except if the territory is information, in which case the map is literally the territory. Knowledge is information, is it not?

link
stevenhuang 1125 days ago
Have you heard of information theory?

Numbers can mean anything. A multitude of numbers as voltage potentials and ion gradients sufficiently describe your brain.

Biology manifests this arrangement as a brain, without which this arrangement would also be similarly meaningless.

Your argument against deriving meaning from statistics completely ignores that the brain also works this way.

link
dS0rrow 1125 days ago
> Have you heard of information theory?

> Your argument against deriving meaning from statistics completely ignores that the brain also works this way.

The brain is not predicting it's compressing.

link
naasking 1124 days ago
> The brain is not predicting it's compressing

Compression requires prediction, therefore your brain requires prediction.

link
dS0rrow 1124 days ago
Some form of prediction being used by the higher-level neurons doesn't make the brain a prediction engine.
link
naasking 1124 days ago
I'm not sure who claimed the brain was a "predictive engine" or what that means exactly. The OP specifically referenced predictive coding which describes precisely what is meant, and has empirical support.

If you meant this as a comparison to machine learning, then a predictive coding model closely matches.

link
stevenhuang 1125 days ago
The current prevailing theory in neuroscience is in fact the brain is a prediction engine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding

link