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

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

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.