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Quote by Kaylee Stepkoski

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Ever: The Alliance

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Kaylee Stepkoski

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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.”

Jeff HawkinsA Thousand Brains
Book:A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence
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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?”

NeuroscienceJeff HawkinsA Thousand Brains
Book:A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of 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.”

NeuroscienceJeff HawkinsA Thousand BrainsNeocortexBrain Stem
Book:A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence
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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.”

MachinesNeuroscienceJeff HawkinsA Thousand BrainsNeocortex
Book:A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence
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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.”

NeuroscienceExpertJeff HawkinsNeocortexReference Frames
Book:A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence
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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.”

PerceptionVotingNeuroscienceJeff HawkinsSensory Input
Book:A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence
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