More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
We are the only species that does this.
hierarchical thinking,
grows exponentially,
Our first invention was the story:
evolutionary process inherently accelerates
law of accelerating returns
reverse-engineering the human brain may be regarded as the most important project in the universe.
“statistical analysis.”
there is more complexity in a single neuron than in the overall structure of the neocortex.
ideas, thoughts, and skills form based
how does a problem-solving neocortex attain consciousness?
we start implementing our decisions before we are even aware that we have made them.
mind experiments
anthropomorphization,
technology—written language—
This is why we invent tools—to compensate for our shortcomings.
there are no images, videos, or sound recordings stored in the brain. Our memories are stored as sequences of patterns. Memories that are not accessed dim over time.
Once your mind has fixed on an understanding, however, it may be difficult to see the other perspective.
our conscious experience of our perceptions is actually changed by our interpretations.
patterns of information
sensory perception, recognition of everything from visual objects to abstract concepts, controlling movement, reasoning from spatial orientation to rational thought, and language—basically, what we regard as “thinking.”
thalamus, brain stem, and spinal cord.
basic unit is a pattern recognizer
reflect the patterns we actually learn over time.
chemistry is theoretically based on physics
weak ability to process logic, but a very deep core capability of recognizing patterns.
very strong ability humans have to recognize patterns.
100,000 concepts
100,000 “chunks” of knowledge
“street smarts” actually require substantially more of our neocortex than “book smarts.”
law of accelerating returns.
synthetic neocortex that will contain well beyond a mere 300 million pattern processors.
hierarchies.
(written, spoken, visual).
hierarchical hidden Markov models
pattern recognition–based neocortex.

