Alex Efremov

The latter, you just wait for the next debate over how to think about the brain

It seems to me that being vulnerable to anti-science propaganda too often goes hand in hand with not being into sci-fi literature

This summer my lab's journal club somewhat unintentionally ended up reading papers on a theme of "more naturalistic computational neuroscience". I figured I'd share the list of papers here 🧵:

I wonder, where would be a good place to do modeling and chat with many people that study different species or do comparative studies? (asking for a friend)

Working with Dan was the best work experience I ever had, don't miss out

A lot of answers here about the complexity of the brain. I think, the problem is not the complexity itself but our desire to answer complex Qs while the foundation is not there yet. Theory doesn't start with explaining the human brain, it "ends" there (of course, it never really ends)

Alternatively, we can say that now this neural activity represents our perturbations

If we change neural activity, there's nothing more in the physical world, that this activity represents. But we can still call it representation, just of something from the platonic world I guess 😅

A particular cell with altered transcriptome, though, probably makes a transition from being a muscle cell to being a skin cell (not sure if altered transcriptome would be enough here, but feels like it)

But if we somehow change hair cell activity, it doesn't change the sound frequency, no?

And because we want to be able to communicate our findings to those who are not computational neuroscientists

I still think it's relative. This calculation doesn't substantiate info. It just sets an upper boundary on the possibly measured info about the observable universe.

Isn't the phrase like "generation/creation of info" meaningless from IT perspective? I thought, info can only be measured, and it is a relative term, not a substance

I wonder what you think about the extent of its usefulness?

I think many would agree that information theory can be useful in neuro studies, but a lot less would agree that it is THE lens through which we should always regard neural systems. Probably some people think that putting that lens away to take another one is what we lack to make a breakthrough 2/2

The way I read this debate is not around the lines of information theoretic approach to the brain being true or not, but of it being useful or not.
I think there was an analogy of a stone thrown into the water, which could be described through information theory, but that'd not be very useful. 1/2

Depends on whether other people being able to interpret our papers is a pressing issue for us 😉

I'm guilty as well

Sure, but what does he need it for?

Why is he still so obsessed with the media then?

I guess one starts with a government

Sure, just call it terrorism and it's illegal

Delighted to be in Leeds joining the School of Computing! Fantastic first impressions — like a "less offensive London" (youtu.be/watch?v=_6_VVLgrgFI). Stay tuned for a PhD position starting next October. Meanwhile, drop me a message with your CV and research interests—I'd love to hear from you!

Wait, it is a feature not a bug in your code? 😮

The system seems to be finally broken

the most uncomfortable question is not whether the next president would be able to implement those policies but whether they would go further than that

As a starter, would like to raise a problem in AI ethics.
We should teach AI to be less harsh to people on Saturday mornings