Here is a little notebook where I play around with converting images from a polar representation to a Cartesian representation. This is similar to the way our bodies map information from the retina onto the early visual areas. Mapping from the visual field (A) to the thalamus (B) to the cortex (C) These ideas are … Continue reading Playing Around with Retinal-Cortex Mappings
Folding Autoencoders
The one where I perform some autoencoder origami to make sense of the brain.
An Introduction to the Predictive Brain
A short look at theories of the "predictive brain".
Natural Language Processing & The Brain: What Can They Teach Each Other?
This post looks at what recent advances in natural language processing can teach us about the brain and cognition.
Free Will: Do We Have It?
The more we design intelligent systems the more we creep up against the concepts of free will and determinism. These concepts underlie the stories we tell ourselves and underpin our legal systems. But what does free will mean? How does it influence our actions? And can we get rid of it? The approach of this … Continue reading Free Will: Do We Have It?
Rambles about Language Models
"But it must be recognised that the notion of 'probability of a sentence' is an entirely useless one, under any known interpretation of this term." Chomsky (1969) Are language models a waste of time? I recently found this post in my drafts, having written it over the Christmas period in 2017. Having talked with several … Continue reading Rambles about Language Models
How do we remember characters?
I have a question of cognitive science: how do we hold in our minds the combination of characteristics that make up a particular object or character? How do we then keep that specific combination in mind and consistent over the span of a narrative? Consistency is a hard one. Characters may be separated by several … Continue reading How do we remember characters?
Brief Thoughts on Fairness, Equality & Hierarchy
Apes have them. Birds have them (maybe). Let’s build a hierarchy. Or should we flatten it to build a parking lot?
MongoDB with Docker – Quick Refresh
Quick refresh on one way to manage a Mongo database for access by Python programs. Set a directory to store the database. Let's call this /mnt/mongodata. Then run a docker container with the most recent version of MongoDB: docker run --name mongoserver -p 27017:27017 -v /mnt/mongodata:/data/db mongo. Just for completeness: the "--name" flag allows us … Continue reading MongoDB with Docker – Quick Refresh
Amateur Dev-Ops: Setting Up an Ubuntu Server
Or let me write down what I did to setup a new server so when the whole thing goes up in flames I can do it again.
Robotic Ape 