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WBraun
climber
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The intelligent class has noumenon experiences as things as they are.
Not like gross materialists who see things as they think they are .......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Critical Dynamics of Natural Time-Varying Images
Brandon Munn and Pulin Gong
Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 058101 (2018) – Published 1 August 2018
A deep understanding of the dynamical properties of natural time-varying images is essential for interpreting how they are efficiently processed in the brain. Here we examine natural time-varying images from the perspective of their spatiotemporal patterns and find evidence of dynamical thermodynamic criticality. We further demonstrate that these spatiotemporal patterns ubiquitously organize as localized, propagating patterns. By studying these propagating patterns and their spreading dynamics over time, we demonstrate that the critical dynamics of natural time-varying images belong to the universality class of directed percolation. These critical dynamics have important implications for understanding neural processing of time-varying stimuli.
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The DP [directed percolation] property of natural stimuli indicates that there exist spatiotemporal patterns with a range of sizes, particularly large percolating clusters. These dynamical patterns as found in the DVS [dynamic vision sensor] recordings are much larger than local, Gabor-like filters often used in understanding signal processing within the visual system [6]. Hence, segmenting natural time-varying stimuli into such dynamical patterns may be an efficient signal representation mechanism. In addition, it has long been hypothesized that neural systems are adapted to efficiently exploit the spatiotemporal structures of natural signals [30,31] such that the internal dynamics of neural population activity is similar to that of external environments [2,31]. Propagating patterns belonging to DP represent a novel, dynamical property for quantifying whether and how internal dynamics of the brain match external environments. Indeed, clustered activity patterns with similar propagating properties to those found in NTVI [natural time-varying images] have been observed at both mesoscopic [32,33] and macroscopic levels [34,35] of neural systems. These experimental observations suggest that it would be interesting to analyze neural population activity and test whether the spatiotemporal dynamics of neural systems belong to the same universality class as natural movies.
Finally, the ubiquity of such patterns in both natural images and neural spatiotemporal activity leads us to hypothesize that they might be essential for external inputs to efficiently modulate internal neural activity to optimally represent dynamical external environments. Such efficient modulation may explain why criticality has been clearly observed in the collective activity of retinal neurons responding to naturalistic movies compared with other artificial stimuli [20], suggesting that such driven retinal activity might also exhibit DP properties.
Spontaneous Cortical Activity Reveals Hallmarks of an Optimal Internal Model of the Environment
Pietro Berkes, Gergő Orbán, Máté Lengyel, József Fiser,
Science 07 Jan 2011:
Vol. 331, Issue 6013, pp. 83-87
DOI: 10.1126/science.1195870
Abstract
The brain maintains internal models of its environment to interpret sensory inputs and to prepare actions. Although behavioral studies have demonstrated that these internal models are optimally adapted to the statistics of the environment, the neural underpinning of this adaptation is unknown. Using a Bayesian model of sensory cortical processing, we related stimulus-evoked and spontaneous neural activities to inferences and prior expectations in an internal model and predicted that they should match if the model is statistically optimal. To test this prediction, we analyzed visual cortical activity of awake ferrets during development. Similarity between spontaneous and evoked activities increased with age and was specific to responses evoked by natural scenes. This demonstrates the progressive adaptation of internal models to the statistics of natural stimuli at the neural level.
Our percepts rely on an internal model of the environment, relating physical processes of the world to inputs received by our senses, and thus their veracity critically hinges upon how well this internal model is adapted to the statistical properties of the environment. For example, internal models in vision are used to extract the features, such as low-level oriented edges or high-level objects, that gave rise to the retinal image (1). This requires that the internal model is adapted to the cooccurrence statistics of visual features in the environment and the way they jointly determine natural images. Several aspects of perception (2, 3), motor control (4), decision making (5, 6), and higher cognitive reasoning (7, 8) are governed by such statistically optimal internal models. Yet identifying the neural correlates of optimal internal models has remained a challenge (see supporting online text).
We addressed this problem by relating evoked and spontaneous neural activity (EA and SA, respectively) (9) to two key aspects of Bayesian computations performed with the internal model (Fig. 1A). The first key aspect is that a statistically optimal internal model needs to represent its inferences as a probability distribution, the Bayesian posterior P(features|input, model) (2, 10) describing the inferred probability that a particular combination of features may underlie the input. Thus, under the general assumption that the visual cortex implements such an optimal internal model, EA should represent the posterior probability distribution for a given input image (2, 11, 12), and SA should represent the posterior distribution elicited by a blank stimulus. The second key aspect of a statistically optimal internal model, under only mild assumptions about its structure, is that the posterior represented by SA converges to the prior distribution, which describes prior expectations about the frequency with which any given combination of features may occur in the environment, P(features|model). This is because as the brightness or contrast of the visual stimulus is decreased, inferences about the features present in the input will be increasingly dominated by these prior expectations (for a formal derivation, see supporting online text). This effect has been demonstrated in behavioral studies (3, 13), and it is also consistent with data on neural responses in the primary visual cortex (V1) (14). Relating EA and SA to the posterior and prior distributions provides a complete, data-driven characterization of the internal model without making strong theoretical assumptions about its precise nature.
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Our results suggest that V1 implements an internal model that is adapted gradually during development to the statistical structure of the natural visual environment and that SA reflects prior expectations of this internal model. Although these findings do not address the degree to which statistical adaptation in the cortex is driven by visual experience or by developmental programs, they set useful constraints for both dynamical (24) and functional models (12) of sensory processing. We expect our approach to extend to other brain areas and to provide a general, quantitative way to test future proposals for computational strategies used by the cortex.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Largo: . . . the bottom-up, bit-torrent method of investigation has worked on every other phenomenon in physical nature, . . . .
I’ll demur. I’d say it just looks that way, but there’s a lot of slippage.
. . . how a physical object "becomes" or produces phenomenological experience.
Duck: The intelligent class has noumenon experiences as things as they are.
I’d agree with this, but it’s cryptic for most people. Physicalists appear very concerned with the mind making stuff up. What appears to be at issue for physicalists is knowing “what things really are.” Apparently no amount of criticism about the lack of finality of knowledge or the provisionalism of theory and evidence can get physicalists to consider that objects might be merely phenomenal—that is, with nothing substantially concrete (objective) underneath.
Why must there be “things?” I suppose this is a philosophical question. I suspect there is a deep psychological need for certainty, for clarity, for a non-random (seeming) world.
Noumena give rise to phenomena. What one believes is what one sees. It’s so very difficult to hold the universe in abeyance and see normal, everyday seeing. We are so practiced at the other approach—and much of it really works (as long as we don’t get to demanding).
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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What appears to be at issue for physicalists is knowing “what things really are.”
Knowing "what things really are," is more of an issue for philosophers. Physicalists look at a subset of things and find ways to discuss with other physicalists what is happening. What physicalists have learned may or may not be of interest to non-physicalists.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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. . . . find ways to discuss with other physicalists what is happening.
What’s “what" seems hardly a philosophical issue when determining causality or workings. If one doesn't know what's what, then what is what they're talking about?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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"...Besides it not being so clear what it is to commit yourself to an answer to an ontological question, it also isn’t so clear what an ontological question really is, and thus what it is that ontology is supposed to accomplish..."
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WBraun
climber
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Knowing "what things really are," is more of an issue for philosophers.
The gross materialists just remain in illusion and deluded masqueraded as knowledge to continually mislead humanity with their incomplete mental speculations.
This why the gross materialists are operating in the mode of ignorance misleading themselves and the others.
The blind leading the blind ...
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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There once was a fox who had built himself a trap as a den, sat down in it, thinking it was a normal den (not out of cunning, but because he had always taken the traps of others for their dens).… This trap was only big enough for him.… Nobody could fall into his trap, because he was sitting in it himself.… If one wanted to visit him in the den where he was at home, one had to go into his trap. Of course everybody could walk right out of it, except him.… The fox living in the trap said proudly: so many fall into my trap; I have become the best among foxes. And there was even something true in that: nobody knows the trap business [das Fallenwesen] better than he who, for a long time, has been sitting in a trap taking it for his den.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2018 - 10:22am PT
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But seriously, I no more need to undertake a course of your serious mind study than you need a course in physics. It's just a discussion here. Lighten up :D
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Light as a feather here, Dingus. What made you believe otherwise?
But one wonders about the comment - I no more need to undertake a course of your serious mind study...
My sense of it is that your fear or aversion or disinterest in looking directly at your own mind is not so much a revolt against my method, but of ANY method, which is queer seeming that the question is: What is mind?
Sounds like the guy who said if you want to know about Miles Davis' music, you need only study the molecular configuration of a trumpet, and the sound patterns produced when air was blown through same.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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If one doesn't know what's what, then what is what they're talking about?
Mary, where John had had, "had had had", had had, "had had", had had the right answer.
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WBraun
climber
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Sounds like the guy who said if you want to know about Miles Davis' music,
you need only study the molecular configuration of a trumpet, and the sound patterns produced when air was blown through same.
Yes, that's exactly what the gross materialists do.
All while they simply neglect the soul of those sound vibrations which is the real important factor .......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sounds like the guy who said if you want to know about Miles Davis' music, you need only study the molecular configuration of a trumpet, and the sound patterns produced when air was blown through same.
who was that guy? and where/when did he say that?
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Don Paul
Social climber
Denver CO
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The studies such as the one posted by Ed Hartouni above are far more interesting than someone's mystical interpretations of their dreams. Somewhat off topic but here is an argument that Creativity Is The Most Logical Process There Is. The point in the video is that it's impossible for us to see anything except through our biases.
^ Ed I think the quote is from one of Douglas Hofstadter's books.
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WBraun
climber
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mystical interpretations
There is no such thing.
Only the clueless gross materialists and fake spiritualists themselves are the originators of such nonsense .....
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Sounds like the guy who said if you want to know about Miles Davis' music, you need only study the molecular configuration of a trumpet, and the sound patterns produced when air was blown through same.
JL often sets his targets at an easy distance.
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morphus
Mountain climber
Angleland
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Bohm talked in huge sweeping arcs and would drift point to point interlarding his drift with mystical quotes, equations, and funky examples of holograms and things illustrating his implicate order, never breaking down his grad ideas into intelligible portions we could start to piece together into some coherent whole. Someone needed to stop him at every bend and have him dial a given point but nobody did. He simply never worked on his presentation
bit harsh. your reality is the explicate order-the whole is the implicate order innit;)
this is a good summary of Bohm and his ideas:
[Click to View YouTube Video]
and his thoughts on dialogue are topical in the age of internet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_Dialogue
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Trump
climber
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.. you can go there if that’s your thing. It ain’t mine.
That’s cool. We all have our things, where ever our things come from.
My daughter’s thing is to have beautiful brown skin. My thing is to have this pinkish stuff.
After being estranged from my dad for 50 years, I was pretty surprised to notice that we shared a lot of thinking processes, even down to some pretty wacky specific beliefs. Whereas my child’s preferred hairstyle and nonconforming gender identity are quite similar to her bio moms who she doesn’t know.
Is nonconforming gender identity actually a thing, or is it just a thing because we think it’s a thing?
We’ve all got our things, where ever our things come from. This consciousness thing seems to be working out pretty well for us, so far. Opposable thumbs ain’t so bad either.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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What a variety of perspectives of Mind. At one end of the spectrum are the scientists (and math guys), and at the other end are the serious meditators.
JL, having practiced the Zen religion for decades, is thoroughly indoctrinated and doesn't understand why some of us don't wish to return to Beginner's Mind - presumably that of a newborn infant in which primal awareness dominates and one's "I" has yet to emerge, and the ability to distinguish objects from one another is largely absent, so that form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
Why he keeps saying, over the course of this thread, that those who do not indulge in the quest for no-thingness are gripped by fear is a mystery. I suppose that were he to divulge that the internal adventures he has experienced went beyond a return to the womb he might gain some traction.
It's unfortunate that his focus excludes so many other internal adventures that, together, might illuminate the incredible scope of our minds. The fixation on empty awareness and its putative implications that physical objects don't actually exist, with modern physics telling us they are mostly empty space, seems to be a metaphysical dead end.
But he perseveres in his faith, an innocent path that he follows, in my opinion, admirably. Some of us are equally committed to our pursuits.
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Trump
climber
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Yea. And my child can look in the window and choose her gender identity.
I admire how y’all have the curiosity to think about why we do things the way we do, whether it’s how we choose to walk into a store, or how we choose our gender identities, or how we choose to think about our minds.
And quite honestly, admirably, to go on and on and on about it over all these years, without really seeming to have anything to show for it, other than the satisfaction that it gives our minds to do it.
It’s a curious thing. Or maybe it’s just my mind saying that it’s curious. And admirable. My dad thinks so too.
Our minds are constantly ruling in our favor. Why wouldn’t they? If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be. Our survivor biased minds are biased towards survival.
To my mind, anyway.
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WBraun
climber
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JL, having practiced the Zen religion for decades, is thoroughly indoctrinated and doesn't understand why some of us don't wish to return to Beginner's Mind
The gross materialists lay on their death bed when "The Doctor" arrives and says take this medicine and you'll live.
The gross materialists will say there is "NO NEED FOR DOCTOR", "I don't believe in that Medicine", and on and on with their own brainwashed mental speculative theories, blah blah blah.
This is why gross materialists are insane ......
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