[chrisweekly]

Interesting take. I respectfully differ. IIRC, Feynman said something akin to my POV:

Brains are for thinking. Documents / PKM systems / tools are for remembering.

IOW: take notes, write things down.

FWIW I have a degree in cognitive psychology (psychobiology, neuroanatomy, human perception) and am an amateur neuroscientist. Somewhat familiar w/ the brain. :)

[mallowdram]

Feynman wasn't a neurobiologist.

I'd read Spontaneous Brain by Northoff (Copernican, irreducible neuroscience) or oscillatory neurobiology Buzsaki.

The brain is lossless.

I would agree that external forms of memory are evolutionarily progressive, that ability to utilize the external forms requires a lossless relationship.

Once we grasp the infinitely inferior external of arbitrariness (symbols words) are correlated through superior, lossless, concatenated internals (action-neural-spatial-syntax), until we can externalize that direct perception, the externals are deeply inferior, lossy forms.

[wduquette]

But taking notes and writing ideas out requires that we think them through...which we usually don't do otherwise. This has been a commonplace of the intellectual life for centuries.

[mallowdram]

Words and thoughts are wholly separate. Notes aren't the direct results of perception, they are more like sportscasters reading the mind of pitchers. Notes point to thoughts or observations, they aren't the thoughts themselves.

“We refute (based on empirical evidence) claims that humans use linguistic representations to think.” Ev Fedorenko Language Lab MIT 2024

[wduquette]

I did not say that my brain uses linguistic representations internally when I think; I said that the process of turning my ideas into words helps me think.

[mallowdram]

Actually you said "writing ideas out requires that we think them through" and this isn't what's happening in brains. In actuality, words interfere with our ability to think.

[barrenko]

Or alternate "pen is mightier that the sword."

[nathan_compton]

"The brain is lossless."

Nothing is lossless.

[mallowdram]

Fourier transforms are lossless. If it entered the oscillations of senses, it's still there in your brain. You may never need it, but every action is detailed by difference.

[nathan_compton]

A Fourier transform is just a change of coordinates. It has nothing to do with the signal per se. If you have a signal which was measured or recorded with finite precision (as any signal must be) then the fourier transform (as a pure mathematical object) simply preserves the same amount of loss that the original signal had. But, in fact, to do that, we would need to do the transform on hardware that could represent real numbers. This hardware does not exist in computers or in your brain, and so a fourier transform is lossy in that case. Still, the idea that your brain encodes all information in oscillations is not accurate - your temporary electrical activity can be substantially disrupted without you losing your memories, suggesting very strongly (to put it mildly) that some of your memories are encoded chemically and physically in changes to the connectivity between neurons that do not depend on persistent electrical activity. That encoding scheme must be lossy.

[mallowdram]

Fourier transforms are simply ways of interpreting. The senses restrict, the existing memory/engram/affinity of those senses: we don't yet know how much is lost, whether any of it is lost. In the schema, we must assume their inputs are preserved in some way, (study those with photographic memory, or the eidetic as example) and it is assumed preservation is chemical in nature that represents or co-represents the oscillations, yet we're not sure what exactly this is as of 2024 (I haven't finished reading this year's). Of course there are disruptions, and sleep - you do not remember the sounds around us when asleep. But if you recorded an event, it is still there. By lossless, I am referring to the idea there is no true separation between the world and the brain. While the senses mitigate, the fields interact. Would the toroidal manifold of the entorhinal cortex exist without a Copernican-Mach universe? Of course not. In essence, as Northoff illustrates on his last book's cover, the universe is within us. He is neither being poetic nor ironic. Rather paradoxical. Brain's are oscillatory Copernican bulbs, the design elements of the brain reflect the Machian idea that everything affects.

Without direct perception, and using such poor tools as symbols and narratives to externalize memory, we're deeply impoverished as to the nature of memory and our ability to access it. But once we have a better grasp of the neuronal units, spatial-syntax, we will unlock every memory.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10500127/

Also to consider are the shapes and phases between oscillation. "It’s high dimensional complexity; the mind is an attractor in high dimensional phase space formed between neural oscillators." Emergent properties are not reducible to their constituent parts.

[8note]

fourier transforms are lossless, but what impleemntation are you refering to that losslessly implements a fourier transform?

to my knowledge practical fourier transforms set a number of sine waves they will calculate for, and a window of time to look at. these limitations result in loss.

but, just taking the brain, at some point the person will die and decompose. how are you gonna get the oscillations back out of the rotted flesh? there has to be some form of loss to the brain

[mallowdram]

We only need brains when we're alive, so extracting the points isn't required.

In terms of brains, the math is used to model the irreducible occurrences in brains - that everything is still in there. So the math only gives us a window into the complexity. Brains don't compute or calculate necessarily. As an analog, or analoga of differences, it never has to exclude, or experience loss.

For the details: Rhythms of the Brain or Unlocking the Brain both volumes.

[svnt]

Math is models, not reality

[mrguyorama]

Popsci books tend to be horseshit.

Reading one does not make YOU a neurobiologist.

[mallowdram]

They're not popsci books. I'm a co-lead developer on a project with neurobio consultants, so I better know wtf they're talking about.