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Domain: williamcalvin.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to williamcalvin.com.

Comments · 13

  1. Some answers by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 3, Informative · on Ask Slashdot: DIY Computational Neuroscience?

    I research hard AI. In my view thinking through and tackling example problems is the best way to explore a topic. If you require your system to mirror our current understanding of neuroscience, then you're essentially researching the algorithms of the brain.

    If you're specifically looking into epilepsy and related, consider checking out William Calvin's website. He's an experimental neuroscientist from University of Washington, who wrote many books that explain the neurological foundations of the brain in readable form with good detail.

    (1) What are some interesting computational neuroscience simulation problems

    Pretty much anything AI falls under that category. Go over to Kaggle.com and check out some of their competitions, including their past competitions. Check out the Google AI lab and see what they're doing, and check out recent publications to see what people are trying to solve. Ask yourself: Are humans better than the computer, and can it be done better?

    Here's a video of a system that uses neuron simulation (of a sort) to recognize hand-written digits. A hand-written digits dataset is in the UCI archive below.

    (2) Is it easy for a non-academic to get the required data?

    Generally, yes. UCI has a repository of machine-learning datasets. The researchers supporting Kaggle competitions frequently release their data.

    I've found that researchers are generally approachable, and will give away copies of their data (I have 4 datasets from researchers). As a personal anecdote, last week a researcher from this very forum sent me his dataset of Mars altitude images - I'm trying to come up with an algorithm to recognize craters.

    (3) I am familiar with (but not used extensively) simulators like Neuron, Genesis etc. Other than these and Matlab, what other software should I get?

    In my view, pick a computer language that has a wide support network of libraries, and code things from scratch.Something like Perl or R. At some point you will want to break open the box and see what's actually happening inside, and familiarity with the system (having constructed it) is key. You will want to insert trace statements, print out intermediate results, and so on. Most of the pre-built systems don't have what you will ultimately want, and building simulation objects isn't terribly hard.

    (4) Where online or offline, can I network with other DIY Computational Neuroscience enthusiasts?

    Please let me know if you find any (by posting a response).

    I've found that most AI enthusiasts are really "big data" enthusiasts, and most of them are all about business rather than AI. The IRC AI chatrooms are all but dead, and most of what is there are students asking for help with their homework. (Although to be fair, the lurkers there know everything about AI and can answer questions and make suggestions if you're stuck.)

    The NEAI meetup in Cambridge is mostly spectators - people who want to find out about AI or how to use AI ("how can I use AI to improve the performance of my financial company?"). I hear there's an AI meetup out on the West coast that's pretty good.

    See if there's a meetup in your area for something related, or start one and see if anyone shows up.

  2. Re:I can't wait for this meme to die. by DragonWriter · · Score: 1 · on Evolution and the 'Wisdom of Crowds'

    As the parent mentioned, the "Wisdom of Crowds" put Bush in power.


    Actually, a system expressly designed to limit the influence of "crowds" put Bush in power, and only by being far more effective in limiting the influence of "crowds" than it does in its normal operation. Bush wasn't the top vote getter in the popular vote, and to the best evidence, also didn't receive even a plurality of the votes cast (as opposed to counted) in any combination of states holding a majority of the electoral votes.

    Who controls the content of Wikipedia articles? Is it a large crowd of seemingly random contributors each imparting their own bits of wisdom? Or is it a small set of contributors providing the base of an article with a few mostly minor revisions submitted by random people passing by? In my experience, it's the latter.


    So, there is a factor of external, unpredictable change (with some internal biases) from the random passerby submitting revisions, with a focussed selective mechanism in the core group focussed on the article, and new chance changes focus on the variants most successful under the focussed selective method. Oddly, those are key requirements identified for generalized darwinian selection, which seems to be the mechanism TFA is pointing to to explain the success of Wikipedia.

    There's no "crowd" at work here, it's a lot of small groups of vested individuals who have interest in a particular domain and an efficient way of contributing and collaborating in that domain.


    Sure there is; the random passerby that interject changes are a "crowd". And while they may not individually be decisive as to the form of an article at any given time (especially one with the kind of particularly active core group you point to), their changes do send the article off in one direction or another as the regulars react to them, and are a key feature of the difference between Wikipedia and, say, a traditional encyclopedia (also, the fact that the activist groups shift over time without central direction as people self-select into or out of the activist core of any particular article is also a feature of the "crowd" nature of Wikipedia.)
  3. Ice Mountain by swokm · · Score: 0 · on The Heretical Freeman Dyson
    I have to say that his description of Greenland and Antarctica getting so much snow that it offsets their loss really interesting. I'd never heard that before. He's right that there is far too much hype, and not enough scrutiny of all of these claims flying around, no doubt!

    But when he says Wallace Broecker first argued the influx of fresh water melt reversing the warm Atlantic current to Britain in 1997, I have to wonder. I think I read about it from in a book from that anthropology/neurology guy William H. Calvin long before that. Maybe William and Wallace spoke to each other during the research, who knows.

    He is a much smarter and informed man than I. But doesn't he err here, regarding this mechanism for prompting sudden climate shift to an Ice Age (salinity model):

    Since we are confronted with two plausible arguments leading to opposite conclusions, the only rational response is to admit our ignorance. Until the causes of ice-ages are understood, we cannot know whether the increase of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing or decreasing the danger. That is not true. He is ignoring the variable he freely admits in the paragraphs above, that increasing carbon dioxide levels probably do correspond to small increases in temperature. And, of course, increase in temperature leeds to more freshwater melt (although he implies that we don't know where this water comes from... really?). We can observe the increase in sea levels today, as he also admits. The opposite argument here that CO2 levels are low during Ice Ages 'proves' that CO2 may be saving off an Ice Age strikes me as disingenuous with the current data we have on the ocean current theory. There is no reason that slow warming, causing a reversal of that warm Gulf current would NOT cause an ice age for the north. CO2 levels can then do whatever they like ;)

    We don't have to understand the whole global climate system in detail to understand that if this ocean current changes, it will really suck to be British (meaning, "permanent house-guests of the French").

    Stay heretical, though, you crazy old man! I think it's cool!
  4. More on chimp social structure... by rly2000 · · Score: 1 · on Should Chimps Have Human Rights?

    Totally agreed. The first thought that went through my mind when I saw this slashdot topic is that, chimpanzees have what I consider a barbaric social system. Males violently dominate other males for the right to reproduce, almost like a harem. The victorious ones also violently dominate the females, and have no qualms about rape. Maybe we can punish ourselves for certain way we hurt them, but it almost sounds like a double standard that they get a free pass for the way they hurt themselves.

    Also, I wonder whether they would pass the law on a cousin of the chimpanzee (or other closely related species), the Bonobo. That ape hardly gets any press, and from what I understand, the major difference from the chimpanzee due to a completely different social structure.

    Incidentally, I don't want to sound insensitive - one of the reasons why I'm a very strict vegetarian is because I'd like to minimize unnecessary suffering - but this law sounds pretty silly even to someone like me.

  5. fuzzy logic by hany · · Score: 1 · on Microsoft Tops Corporate-Reputation Survey

    I'm sorry, but WTF does Gates spending his personal fortune on charitable causes have to do with the company?

    One of the founders. The public face of the company.

    I.e. something like "fuzzy loging" or "intuitive decisions" or "estimate" or whatever: great feature of our mental powers but also source of fataly wrong decisions in some cases.

    Links to follow: The Cerebral Symphony, We're Only Human..., ...

    Those links may not be the best for this topic but I'm unable to quickly find the one I was wanting for this. Sorry. :/

  6. Re:I hope they clone a Neanderthal by BerntB · · Score: 4, Interesting · on Neanderthal Genome to be Sequenced
    Check out the author William Calvin.

    He is a brain researchers that write about (amongs other things) the evolution of human intelligence. (He even wrote a book about Neanderthals.) One of his theses is that throwing might have been a driver for human intelligence.

    If I remember correctly...
    To hit something you have to send more or less a symphony of nerve signals down the arm without waiting for feedback. Because the exact time of release is shorter than the average time random wait for nerve signals, they even have to go parallell and be averaged in the muscles.

    Then there is distance measurements that needs to be done well in the visual system. Etc.

    In short, it is a complex problem that needs lots of evolved specialized circuitry.

    (I always wondered about fast running animals, here. The way they set their feet down while running should be as complex a problem as throwing? But those that run fast on the planet don't have hands.)

    I think I can safely say that Calvin thinks the Neanderthals would have been hard pressed to learn to throw.

  7. Re:What's that saying? by fm6 · · Score: 5, Interesting · on Household Emergent Behavior?

    There's a school of thought that says that intelligence is based on randomness.

  8. Fake memories by D+H+NG · · Score: 4, Interesting · on Volatility of Human Memory

    Sometimes our brains can be tricked into remembering things that did not happen. Elizabeth Loftus had done much research in the area of misinformation effect, which actually has legal repercussions.

  9. Re:I'm a Lightwave dude... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on What's Keeping You On Windows?

    Newsflash: The Right brain / Left brain dichotomy is a fucking joke. Go back to measuring the size and shape of your head to determine personality. It's probably more accurate.

    http://www.williamcalvin.com/bk2/bk2ch10.htm

  10. A couple of things to note... by scarhill · · Score: 2, Informative · on Abrupt Climatic Change Coming Soon?

    First, the theory isn't new. Here's a good article from The Atlantic.

    Second, as the article explains, this has apparently happened before with drastic results. (How does a 13 degree Farenheit change in 50 years sound?)

    Obviously it can happen due to natural processes. There's also a chance that human-caused warming could kick it off. Either way, the results wouldn't be good.

  11. Much, much better: "Synchronized" and "Unlisted" by vaxer · · Score: 2 · on 0wnz0red

    William C. Calvin's Synchronized and its sequel Unlisted are great reading. Kate Medici's phone firewall isn't as dangerous as YT's dentata, but damn if it doesn't look handy after all. (Perhaps a combination of the two would be good. When you get a telemarketer on the line, just press the button...)

    Calvin is generally pretty realistic about computer security and crypto -- one-time pads actually run out of bits, and nobody hax0rs an entire network by clicking on a pi symbol in the corner of a web page. Better still, the plot's entertaining, and Our Heroine is a BOFH. Fun stuff, and well worth putting on your handheld for those boring meetings.

  12. Much, much better: "Synchronized" and "Unlisted" by vaxer · · Score: 2 · on 0wnz0red

    William C. Calvin's Synchronized and its sequel Unlisted are great reading. Kate Medici's phone firewall isn't as dangerous as YT's dentata, but damn if it doesn't look handy after all. (Perhaps a combination of the two would be good. When you get a telemarketer on the line, just press the button...)

    Calvin is generally pretty realistic about computer security and crypto -- one-time pads actually run out of bits, and nobody hax0rs an entire network by clicking on a pi symbol in the corner of a web page. Better still, the plot's entertaining, and Our Heroine is a BOFH. Fun stuff, and well worth putting on your handheld for those boring meetings.

  13. Re:"Track Feral books through their captors" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting · on Free as in Books?
    No, I agree with you, to an extent.

    But I have found that pressing the "down" key on my Palm device is easier than flipping a page, and a Palm's lighter and more portable than most books. This makes it great for reading on the subway, at lunch, or in the bathtub (just don't drop the Palm in the bath water).

    Fonts can be added to the Palm to make reading easier, "Tall Fonts New Euro" is especially good for reading. The Weasel Reader will allow you to use any font; for Plucker, get Font Hack 123 and just set New Euro as your default font. The biggest problem, with a monochrome Palm, is the lack of contrast between letters and the background, which makes reading for extended periods less inviting.

    Despite that, I've read several of Dr. William Calvin's popular science books on the Palm using Plucker (Calvin provides the full text of all his books on his web site, thanks much, Dr. Calvin!), some fiction (Moon and Sixpence; Psmith, Journalist; etc.) and am currently reading the Project Gutenburg Moby Dick. So it's do-able, and it's do-able even for longer works, and with Plucker it's do-able even when you need different fonts and illustrations. And to reiterate, it's more convenient in some ways that a "real" book.