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A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence

Book by Jeff Hawkins · 13 quotes · Jeff Hawkins, Neuroscience, A Thousand Brains

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A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence Quotes

“For many years, it was believed that the connections between neurons in an adult brain were fixed. Learning, it was believed, involved increasing or decreasing the strength of synapses. This is still how learning occurs in most artificial neural networks. However, over the past few decades, scientists have discovered that in many parts of the brain, including the neocortex, new synapses form and old ones disappear. Every day, many of the synapses on an individual neuron will disappear and new ones will replace them. Thus, much of learning occurs by forming new connections between neurons that were previously not connected. Forgetting happens when old or unused connections are removed entirely.”

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“The list of things everyone should know is short. I would include how the brain is composed of the new part and the older parts. I would include how the neocortex learns a model of the world, whereas the older parts of the brain generate our emotions and more primitive behaviors. I would include how the old brain can take control, causing us to act in ways we know we shouldn’t. And I would include how all of us are susceptible to false beliefs and how some beliefs are viral.”

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“There are two ways to think about ourselves. One is as biological organisms, products of evolution and natural selection. From this point of view, humans are defined by our genes, and the purpose of life is to replicate them. But we are now emerging from our purely biological past. We have become an intelligent species. We are the first species on Earth to know the size and age of the universe. We are the first species to know how the Earth evolved and how we came to be. We are the first species to develop tools that allow us to explore the universe and learn all its secrets. From this point of view, humans are defined by our intelligence and our knowledge, not by our genes. The choice we face as we think about the future is, should we continue to be driven by our biological past or choose instead to embrace our newly emerged intelligence?”

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“When the neocortex wants to do something, it sends a signal to the old brain, in a sense asking the old brain to do its bidding. For example, breathing is a function of the brain stem, requiring no thought or input from the neocortex. The neocortex can temporarily control breathing, as when you consciously decide to hold your breath. But if the brain stem detects that your body needs more oxygen, it will ignore the neocortex and take back control. Similarly, the neocortex might think, 'Don't eat this piece of cake. It isn't healthy.'' But if older and more primitive parts of the brain say, 'Looks good, smells good, eat it,' the cake can be hard to resist.”

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“The question of how the neocortex works can now be phrased more precisely: How does the neocortex, which is composed of thousands of nearly identical cortical columns, learn a predictive model of the world through movement? This is the question my team and I set out to answer. Our belief was that if we could answer it, we could reverse engineer the neocortex. We would understand both what the neocortex did and how it did it. And ultimately, we would be able to build machines that worked the same way.”

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“Reference frames in the old brain learn maps of environments. Reference frames in the what columns of the neocortex learn maps of physical objects. Reference frames in the where columns of the neocortex learn maps of the space around the body. And, finally, reference frames in the non-sensory columns of the neocortex learn maps of concepts. To be an expert in any domain requires having a good reference frame, a good map.”

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“Why do we have a singular perception if we have thousands of models? When we hold and look at a coffee cup, why does the cup feel like one thing and not thousands of things? If we place the cup on a table and it makes a sound, how does the sound get united with the image and feel of the coffee cup? In other words, how do our sensory inputs get bound to a singular percept? [...] Instead of converging onto one location, the connections go in every direction. This is one of the reasons why the binding problem is considered a mystery, but we have proposed an answer: columns vote. Your perception is the consensus the columns reach by voting.”

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“Not that long ago, the question 'What is life?' was as mysterious as 'What is consciousness?'. It seemed impossible to explain why some pieces of matter were alive and others were not. [...] At some point in the future, we will accept that any system that learns the model of the world, continuously remembers the states of that model, and recalls the remembered states will be conscious. There will be remaining unanswered questions, but consciousness will no longer be talked about as 'the hard problem'. It won't even be considered a problem.”

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“To hold on to a false model, such as a flat Earth, requires dismissing evidence that conflicts with your model. Flat-Earth believers say they distrust all evidence that they cannot directly sense. A picture can be fake. An explorer's account can be fabricated. Sending people to the moon in the 1960s could have been a Hollywood production. If you limit what you believe to only things you can directly experience, and you are not an astronaut, then a flat-Earth model is what you end up with. To maintain a false model, it also helps to surround yourself with other people who have the same false beliefs, thus making it more likely that the inputs you receive are consistent with your model. Historically, this entailed physically isolating yourself in a community of people with similar beliefs, but today you can achieve a similar result by selectively watching videos on the internet.”

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“We face a dilemma. 'We' -- the intelligent model of ourselves residing in the neocortex -- are trapped. We are trapped in a body that not only is programmed to die but is largely under the control of an ignorant brute, the old brain. [...] We try to control our old brain's destructive and divisive impulses, but so far we have not been able to do this entirely. Many countries on Earth are still ruled by autocrats and dictators whose motivations are largely driven by their old brain: wealth, sex, and alpha-male-type dominance. The populist movements that support autocrats are also based on old-brain traits such as racism and xenophobia.”

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