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by rdlecler1 783 days ago
Abstraction seems too generous of an interpretation.

A more parsimonious hypothesis is that random networks start out broken, structurally incapable of computation because the structure has parts where information stops flowing or signal gain is so low at certain choke points that it’s presence is like a random coin flip.

Training the network to compute ANYTHING fixes this flow problem, making subsequent training easier, without introducing any kind of abstraction.