_der_erlkonig_ t1_iz3k920 wrote on December 6, 2022 at 5:00 AM

Reply to comment by Ulfgardleo in [R] The Forward-Forward Algorithm: Some Preliminary Investigations [Geoffrey Hinton] by shitboots

Out of curiosity, why do you include this as a requirement for an algorithm to be good/interesting/useful/etc?

Ulfgardleo t1_iz3q7pd wrote on December 6, 2022 at 6:05 AM

I did not. I did it for Hinton.

A heuristic can be useful without proof, especially in tasks that are very difficult to solve. However, you have to supply strong theoretic arguments why they should work. A biological analog is not enough, especially if it is one that we do not understand, either.

Otherwise you end up like the other category of nature inspired optimization heuristics that pretend to optimize by mimicking the hunting patterns of the Harris hawk. And I wished I made this up just now.

chaosmosis t1_iz3ymas wrote on December 6, 2022 at 7:55 AM

Gimmick animal optimization procedures are my guilty pleasure. They're like intellectually cute to me or something. I get happy every time I come across a new one.

Ulfgardleo t1_iz437fi wrote on December 6, 2022 at 9:04 AM

I have a story to tell about the one time where i got invited as external evaluator for a MSc thesis. I agreed, later opened it and then realized it was a comparison of 10 animal migration algorithms.

This thesis sat on my desk for WEEKS because i did not know how to grade it. How do you grade pseudo science?!? Like, it is not the fault of the students to fall prey to this topic, but I also can't condone them not figuring out that it IS pseudoscience.

chaosmosis t1_iz8fzyo wrote on December 7, 2022 at 6:00 AM

I think the main problem is that they aren't theory driven except in an ad hoc sense. They'd be fine if they hadn't become a fad published on by everyone and their mother.

For actually neat discussions of distributed computing in animals, I don't think it's possible to do better than reading about octopuses. Strong recommend for Other Minds to anyone interested in the area.

Red-Portal t1_iz67ufu wrote on December 6, 2022 at 7:51 PM

Yeah there is a whole "zoo" of those things haha.