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chaosmosis t1_iz3ymas wrote

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

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.

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Ulfgardleo t1_iz437fi wrote

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.

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chaosmosis t1_iz8fzyo wrote

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.

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Red-Portal t1_iz67ufu wrote

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

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