On Sat, 24 Aug 2002, Frank Mayhar wrote: #> #Mark A Mandel <mam at theworld.com> writes: #> #> And let's not forget that despite their name, the software constructs #> #> that their creators optimistically named "neural nets" probably have #> #> very little in common with wetware. # #This is not true. The reason they are called "neural networks" is that #the are modelled after the biological structures for which they are named. #In their implementation, of course, they are quite different, but in what #they do and how they do it they are very similar. OK. I knew they were modelled after nerve complexes, but my point was that they were modelled after *what was known or believed about those structures at the time NNs were developed*. If subsequent research has supported the parallelism, good. Although ISTR reading that NNs have fairly small numbers of links, while human neurons have links to many thousands of other neurons-- or am I totally misremembering? #Mark A Mandel wrote: #> That's simulation of behavior at an insect level. ELIZA can simulate #> conversation convincingly at a certain level, too. How similar #> (homeomorphic?) are the innards? How far does it scale toward human #> cognition? # #Considering that the most complex software neural network ever developed has #at most the complexity of an insect, comparing it to the complexity underlying #human cognition doesn't make much sense. On the other hand, though, I am #becoming more and more convinced that the difference between the complexity #of an insect and that of a human is a matter of amount, not kind. It's the #same set of processes, with some modifications and much, much increased #complexity. Well, we'll just have to wait and see. #ELIZA was a keyword-based recogizer and can't be thought of in the same #context as a neural network. For a brief description of artificial #neural networks, I suggest # http://www.emsl.pnl.gov:2080/proj/neuron/neural/what.html Yes, I know the basics of how ELIZA works. I meant that criticism in concert with the limitations of our knowledge, per my first para above. -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel