From: Kaj Sotala (xuenay@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Mar 11 2009 - 15:17:10 MDT
On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Petter Wingren-Rasmussen
<petterwr@gmail.com> wrote:
> After reading Simulation, Consciousness, Existence by Hans Moravec. I
> started thinking about possible neural networks that already exists, outside
> of brains and computers..
>
> I think the Global stockmarket can be viewed as a neural network. Comparing
> it to the brain:
A "neural network" is a certain type of mathematical model. It's
pretty obvious that the stock market is not a neural network in any
sense that doesn't stretch the original term to the point of breaking.
(What exactly are the stock market's equivalents of neurons, and what
corresponds to the weigths of their connections?)
However, the stock market *is* an information-processing system, and
it can also be viewed as a form of mental architecture. See for
instance http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.33.6906
, in which it is said:
"One idea that is emerging is that social organization is itself a
form of cognitive architecture. The argument is as follows. Cognitive
processes involve trajectories of information (transmission and
transformation), so the patterns of these information trajectories, if
stable, reflect some underlying cognitive architecture. Since social
organization - plus the structure added by the context of activity -
largely determines the way information flows through a group, social
organization may itself be viewed as a form of cognitive architecture.
If this view is accepted, it has an odd consequence: we can use the
concepts, constructs and explanatory models of social groups to
describe what is happening in a mind."
(Having said this, this thread sounds somewhat off-topical to me.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:01:04 MDT