Would like to know of any researchers in this group who have made original contributions in theory or practice in the field of neuroscience in general and brain, mind and consciousness in particular.
Well my work in theoretical modelling of tissues to determine function and data constraints has resulted in a partial model of consciousness
Interesting, Graeme. Can you elaborate on your model. Where and when was it published? Is it online?
The complete model has never been published in all its ramifications. Many of the sub-models, (it being a string of models) have been trotted out, and put through their paces, but I detect a real resistance to their acceptance on a number of levels. The problem lies in the Paradigm change needed to accept the precepts. People are willing to accept the precepts of neural models, they are willing to accept the precepts of computational psychology, both of which, have limitations when attempting to model the brain, if only because neural models never quite reach the level of tissues, and computational psychology can't seem to get over the Turing Church reliance on logic, and discrete memory.
But they don't seem to see the lack of congruence between the two models, and so do not accept that there is a need to step away from discrete storage, if you want to model a neural based system adequately, or to be able to abstract from neural systems to tissues if you want to adequately understand the data-flow through the brain. Since my model requires both the understanding that you need to step away from logic/discrete models of memory, and the understanding that you need to abstract from the neuron to the tissue to understand the organ, I find both groups resistant to my model, and therefore not able to accept it's precepts. Under those circumstance I am not likely to publish the whole model, if only because I have too much ego invested to just give it away to people who have no ability to understand it.
A question: are people going to decide what you do; or you do it because you have ample scientific justification to think its right; and then allow people to take their time to veer around to your view?
I do it because I must. People are always telling me not to do science, but it isn't really an option for me, I just wish I could make a living at it. I was just reading a quote, but lost the attribution my appology to the author.
There are four stages to a new idea:
1. Don't be ridiculous, it doesn't work that way
2. Ignore him maybe he will go away
3. He is wrong of course, but it is an interesting way of thinking
4. I knew it all along!
I get the first three all the time, but of course number 4 that is the trick I have not yet managed to achieve.
In my humble opinion gentlemen, Michael is right, ideas are not like fine wine - they don't get better. Hence incremental innovation which can come from any source. Google lives by this, with only one caveat - fail fast!
Many of the best ideas are often thought of as ridiculous to begin with - but because a million people say something is right does not make it technically right - society sees the popular choice as the "correct" choice and that is why we have politicians to prove that the masses are often wrong.
The question I have for you is: if I present you with a brilliant idea that we could all embark on and facilitate incremental innovation to build a technology that could improve the world - would you join me or laugh at me?
Doing great things takes a high degree of risk and selflessness while often those who could help stand back and watch and wait for failure that which could be avoided with their help.
Greetings. You may enjoy this anecdote about getting ideas off the shelf. In the finale to our weekly lit review a colleague encouraged the group to pursue our ideas with passion. So people shared anecdotes about serendipitous discoveries that had arisen because scientists had taken chances on "ridiculous" hypotheses. I took the opportunity to express some recent thoughts about evolution working backwards. The group laughed and dismissed the idea but another colleague and I had a nice conversation about it after the meeting. Yesterday morning I was ecstatic to find that a group from MIT had used bacteria and a theoretical model to show that reverse evolution does occur, albeit in a limited capacity (Physical Review Letters: http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v106/i19/e198102).
Lynn Margulis recently gave a talk at my university. Recall that it took years for people to accept her idea about endosymbiosis, but her persistence lead to scientific acllaim.
Keep the ideas flowing and ignore the dogma...
Ah, yes, I keep telling myself that, as I try to survive on chips and pop because I can't afford meat....
One can understand Graeme's anguish. And that of the rest who share their ideas about what is the right thing to do.
As I reflect this is what strikes me:
The eternal game continues. There are some who dictate the agenda. Smart alecks, committed but suave, persuasive, dismissive power wielders. Whether in politics, organisations, science, human affairs et al. And the rest either fall in line and prosper, or oppose and perish.
Or some oppose only to seek covert approval.
But rarely does anyone have the nerve, and persistence, and most important, patience, to set a new agenda, and then persist with a comprehensive set of ideas and evidences to back it up.
I think that needs a mindset, and a fortitude, of a different order.
That is why revolutionary leaps in science are so few and far between. Incremental, self-corrective steps, yes, but leaps no.
Yes, well, I am still working on it, it just takes more time when you can't prototype the system properly because your income won't let you, and your training breaks down. Currently I am prototyping an implicit memory model, that is at the base of my model, and think I have shown that applying a logic element I call a satysfaction gate, to binary Content Accessible Memory, allows a more degenerate type of pattern matching, I call Similarity Selection. I haven't proven that this has a benefit yet, mostly because my first prototypes suffer from my cognitive limitations, and keep breaking down, but it seems that I am moving in the right direction.
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