302 - Unalike Minds
The "How the human brain works" topic generally has two primary groups and two secondary offshoots:
- One primary focuses on what we know about the human brain.
- Another focuses on what remains unknown.
- A secondary group attempts to combine the two.
- And another secondary group attempts to ignore the two and toss around debunked and/or fraudulent claims comparing the human brain to "artificial neural networks", like Hinton and his accomplices.
In this case, group #1 ultimately holds the overwhelming advantage, because by latching onto what is known they are able to follow scientific methods to "stand upon the shoulders of giants", growing that knowledge over time. This relegates the second primary group to an ever-shrinking space where counter-arguments can be made and shifts the first secondary group as they attempt to remain on the fuzzy edge.
The final group who ignores the others is, of course, unaffected in any direct sense, as using Frankfurt's technical definition of "Bullshit", they demonstrate an "indifference to the truth", merely advancing some narrative while ignoring the rest. The only caveat is that this group will opportunistically exploit Confirmation Bias by cherry-picking points from any other group, positive or negative, even if it has already been debunked, so long as it appears to support their narrative.
In considering this pattern recently I realized that I've also seen it before on the topic of Determinism vs Free Will vs Compatibilism vs Woo-Woo. My co-founder and I use the tongue-in-cheek phrase of saying that our systems "have free will, in as much as humans do" because we recognize those dynamics in play and feel no need to attach ourselves to a narrative, but we also didn't build on a foundation of debunked claims like LLMs, RL, etc, so there was no counter-force to drive such a coping mechanism.
The irony today is a product of population dynamics operating over time and on deeply and algorithmically biased social platforms, regarding disinformation/misinformation. That irony is that most of the most popular "AI (domain) Influencers", humans with over 50,000-100,000 followers depending on the platform, fall into the "AI Woo-Woo" category. They ignore all but tokens of cherry-picked evidence relating to the human brain, as those promote debunked and demonstrably false narratives to sustain their own "influence" and fuel Ponzi Schemes and various other scams.
The silver lining is that even if such "AI Influencers" ignore reality, scientific progress continues, and the ground upon which they may stand continues to shrink with the waters around them rising. Bullshit can't halt progress, "it can only delay it for a little while."
