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From: TEDtalksDirector
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  • holy crap.. i just dozed off...

  • so you just shows how habits become addictive

  • the animation of the guy tickling himself is really creepy

  • 9:49 guy on the right= me in class :p

  • Posh lol

  • And he forgot to ask himself "Why do we move? " :)

  • @nmandarina He did - to reproduce. He says so at the end.

    And we reproduce to propagate our species and that is instinct. Why do we propagate our species? Survival. What to survive for? Again, instinct goes towards selfpreservation, but we mainly survive so we don't die out. What are we here for? Nothing, just to survive.

  • @darksaiyan2006 but thats boring :P and that is what makes us human hehe

  • The name of the game is Tit-for-Tat. hehe (14:20)

  • the brain did not evolve to perceive information, but to filter OUT all information which does not directly benefit our selfish needs.

  • @MyGwendel

    That's the way I see it. If you've ever tripped on a psychedelic drug (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, etc) it becomes QUITE clear that that is the case! Haha.

  • @MyGwendel why did the brain get more complicated if it needed to work with less in formation. your statement makes no sense lol

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  • Best channel ever

  • The cup girl was very impressive, but that feat was from trained muscle memory, far more than from conscious thought. It took disciplined cognition to create the pattern, yes, but it was trial&error through repetition, with on-site storage, that allowed that intense speed.

    To transfer this to robotics, the motion sensors must have their own abilities for learned pattern recall. The brain at that point commands "perform series X" and the body does it. Unless, like he said, there is added input.

  • @DonQuixotedeKaw Impressive, BUT? Uh, she was using MOVEMENT. The topic of this video, you know? Movement doesn't have to be conscious thought, as his sea thing example shows.

  • "I happen to know my children don't lie." haha boy who is he kidding?

  • @russelgene1 - A joke, no doubt, however dry the delivery.

  • adaptive model based filtering or what an adaptive Kalman filter does.

  • Man, I was going the zombie snacks option... Boy, was I wrong!

  • Weird, I was just thinking and writing about this a few days ago, wondering if good robotic movement systems were already using the method (i mean it just seems so obvious): To use a constantly running internal simulation to control the speed of movements, based on how accurately your internal simulation seems to be predicting the real-world movement results (ie: giving robots a self-limiting sense of "confidence").

    I'm glad to see it's already got a name: "Bayesian Inference".

    Yay learning!

  • If you close your eyes and just listen, you hear Stewie! 

  • @IIiTzVicII lol close enough yeah

  • @IIiTzVicII "If you close your eyes and just listen, you hear Stewie!"

    The accent is not exactly the same and he lacks the psychopathic overtones...

  • @IIiTzVicII a teutonic stewie perhaps...

  • @IIiTzVicII : Amazing that so many of us see the world through our television, and not much beyond that.

  • @Bmants The only television I actually watch is sports... but if you don't know who Stewie is, I have to be honest that I feel bad for you.

  • Yawnnnnnnnnnnnnn.

  • 4:50 the robots are probably thinking "GO TO THE RECYCLE BIN YOU FLESH BORN SHOW OFF!"

  • simply genius. Great experimental design, and incredible ability to see the big picture...people always forget to bring it down to the basics! Movement!

  • The brain named itself. WOAH 

  • funny pant-butt

  • If we were made for moving, we would naturally enjoy it more than we do. Instead human beings go for convenience above all else. Hmm...

  • @themeloninc wtf seriously

  • @themeloninc Creating strawmen is one of the symptoms of an inferiority complex. Have you seen your local psychiatrist, I mean... uh, faith healer?

  • @themeloninc are you really that dumb? or trolling?

  • @13:45 Or the children just do what children do while their lips are moving. (i.e. lie to parents).

  • He could have Simply highlighted this by saying: "That an average top scientist makes 100-200K per year .. however an average top Sports player make Millions per year".

  • As a young man, Richard Feynman would pace when trying to solve a radio repair puzzle. Albert Einstein is reported to have said he did his thinking while in motion.

  • Nerdgasm at 2:16 lol

    I love these TED talks ^_^

    ^ unrelated comments

  • @ThElitE LOL at the guy on the left, stony faced, unreserved agreement :D

  • Yup movement is ontological primary, physics shows it. All objects are primary made from motion.

    Reproduction is not an end though, it is a means of survival. The end is survival.

  • Summed up some time ago by Gautama Buddha: "With our thoughts, we make the world.".

  • I CAN BRAIN TOO. I BRAIN ALL SORTS OF THINGS.

  • and then ith th-sthhhopths

    i wonder how many saliva this guy spits per second?

  • not at all sure about this. Bill Gates didn't become who he became because he moved better. Neither did Mandela or Feynman or any other prominent person of the last century. It is true that you still have to translate your thinking into movement, but the quality of movement is not essential to the evolution of man any more

  • @ennot you got it all wrong, the thing about movement is that it demands PREDICTION / ANALYTICAL skills, which certainly Bill Gates and other thinkers have plenty of.

  • seems legit. No really does.

  • Great talk, very insightful. One of my favorites so far just for the great paradigm shift.

  • Well no duh, its all physics. Non-equilibrum, delta G cannot be 0. Thinking humans as a series of dots in space-time at different intervals leading to a causation of propagation of humans.

  • @ScorpiaX by delta G , do you mean Gib's free energy?

  • Hes even standing in front of a bit of the set from Avatar....

  • @Cyllid , interesting, but what charachter from Avatar the movie. Is "driving" a robot with your mind a similar idea? Isint that where hes going with this?

  • What about emitting smells?

  • @funincluded oh, you're right! That's a form of communication that requires no muscles to either send nor receive.

    And supposedly trees do communicate to eachother via smells, ie: Signalling distress. When one tree is under attack from insects, other trees nearby will change their sap chemistry to be less palatable to the insects.

  • bold claim but we really don't understand much of how the brain works. movement is just one aspect the brain does.

    doesnt explain dreaming, imagination, compassion, etc.

    the brain is the most complex thing in the universe. too early to jump to conclusions.

  • @ejayarts

    anti joke chicken here, dreaming is a combination of physical memories and thoughts that you have, which are used in preparation for later actions. your imagination is a prediction of things to come which will make you more prepared if an event from your imagination comes to take place, or is an overlooking of the past and how you could have done things differently. compassion is a necessity for reproduction, and the physics of light is the most complex thing in the universe.

  • just be mindless...

  • some people dont have sex by choice. this undermines his entire argument.

  • @tronist not really. There's always mutants

  • @lightandbeautiful Wow, you're insane. I thought you were from this post, but going to your channel confirmed it.

  • If that speaker was in the movie Avatar, what charachter would he have been.

  • @mattmoore111 Sokka.

  • So does the animal with the largest relative brain size have the most complex movements and uses?

  • Or how does it explain the sharing of information with strangers , stephen hawking, meditation, hearing, or hair?

  • So how does that explain physical self sacrifice for non relatives?

  • @mattmoore111 misfiring of a normally useful behavior. self sacrifice is a quality that is useful in preserving the gene responsible for it but the animal doesn't always use it only for relatives. it's somewhat similar to what happens with cuckoos, who take advantage of a misfiring of other birds. Dawkins explains this very well in several of his books.

  • @mattmoore111 this is a hypothesis about the relationship between movement and the human brain.

    It has nothing to do with what you asked.

    It's like asking how germ theory explains planetary motion. It doesn't, it's unrelated.

  • Very interesting,

  • he lisps a bit, doesn't he?

  • God Probabilistic methods was hard.

  • Funny how due to computers most brain use occurs with minimal body movement.

  • 2:08 - 2:20 is specially funny cuz this guy has tenure at Cambridge.

  • What noise? How does machine vision and movement control have noise? He's adding superfluous variables.

    The problems in machine vision are due to modeling the world in such a linear fashion that there is very limited learning from the experiences of machine vision. This problem can be solved by a more general system which learns a great deal from simple experiences, incorporates that knowledge into its expectations, and gradually gets better at succeeding in maneuvering in the real world.

  • and yet jellyfish do move (according to documentary: the invasion of the jellyfish) and claims are made that they don't have a brain.

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  • Indeed one might argue that the placement of the concentration of sensory apparatuses is even more significant than the brain itself.

  • Comment removed

  • Certainly animals evolved a nervous system INITIALLY to guide movement. A good example is in the evolution of bilateral symmetry and then the positioning of optical sensory apparatus at one end. This is observable in this basic, fundamental form in planaria. Planaria are super simple animals what cannot really "see" much but can sense light and dark and movement. The positioning of the sensory apparati at one side only allows a creature to have a sense of direction, and move TOWARD or AWAY.

  • Also, in his diagram of prior experience/memory + data/sensory + (or =) belief, he ignores instinct, which is not prior experience or memory. Babies instinctively fear heights, and at birth babies can often swim. Where do these at-birth capabilities fit into this?

  • I find his assertions VERY intriguing, but he hasn't completely sold me on the idea that the brain exists ONLY to control movement. Certainly this might be true in lower life forms. Aso one could argue that absolutely anything that is perceived as changing is movement. Typing and writing and talking all involve movement but their GOAL is to express thought.

  • So, sport is more of a brain game than sudoku?

  • @BlitzKriegDelay interesting point ...I'm curious as to what D.W.would say to that

  • I'm paralyzed.. so can I eat my brain now?

  • In the future:

    Professor---"Back in the 21st century, they used to believe a brain's functions were to do complex reasoning, and..."

    Students---"hahaha wtf!"

  • @BlitzKriegDelay

    though the consequent may laugh at the antecedent when he is false, the consequent needs the antecedent so that he may become of consequence.

  • Nice talk - at times a bit simplistic in it's approach but I'm sure that's necessary to make it understandable for a wider audience. Truth be told the Bayesian statistics part didn't surprise me the least, but it's nice to have the suspicion confirmed.

  • what good is such a fact in a time that already has enough trouble developing its thought and emotion? it is hardly the case now (that the brain further evolve for movement control) with the exponential advances of technology.

    now we rapidly decrease the imperative for the control of movement by our brain-bodies since it has become obsolete.

    the brain has a new imperative to develop thought and emotion in order to break out of the abstract prisons of society.

  • please help fid a cure for m.s.

  • 02:20 one guy dont laugh he is dead inside

  • This is profoundly interesting psychologically and suggests that below the subconscious there is a need go move, the body's basic intelligence? The appeal of sports at all levels, perhaps.

  • Only a neuroscientist can reduce belief to mathematics and discount consciousness to such a place that it does not even come iinto his thinking as a factor. Dead matter emerges into life then organs "the brain" evolve. Where is love and beauty? I guess no math for those.

  • @amercury7 Ugh. As humans we think that we are so special that when we are told we're made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe we go, "Nuh uh! No I'm not! you can't describe me using math!" Yes you can. Get over yourself. The human form is a spectacular machine, but it is a machine. That's why you can effect everything from mood to personality using chemicals in the brain. As for love, there are chemicals for that too. I enjoy love very deeply, but I also enjoy science.

  • @syntheticsteve I agree with your statement that the human form is a machine. I disagree with the premise that a human being is his or her form. Consciousness is first cause as Planck and so many other scientists have stated.

    "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness." — Max Planck

  • @amercury7 To bad Planck new absolutely nothing about consciousness, the brain, psychology, the mind, or anything of importance to be able to make any sensible statement about consciousness. Planck's statements about consciousness are exactly as correct as anything Freud or Nietzsche would have said about theoretical physics. If you want to inform yourself on consciousness, read up on the theories by people that actually study it!

  • @Waranoa Note that Mr. Wolpert does not mention consciousness except in passing and that he is a materialist. Science has killed materialism. “all matter exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration which holds the atom together. We must assume behind this force is the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.“ Planck

    "We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart."-Blaise Pascal (1723-1662)

  • @amercury7 I wasn't referring to Wolperto but to you. The next quote by Planck only illustrates he had no knowledge about the mind at all. When you want to study the mind, don't read physics theories, especially not outdated ones. Science progresses so fast, quoting a century-old book will only make you a laughing stock; it's not sociology......

    Also, quoting people does not make you right. Consciousness is the fundamental force? where does it fit into the equation then, with all other forces?

  • @syntheticsteve AlsoSteve I think your special! In fact I know so! :)

  • @amercury7 thanks for making time to share your perspective ...the resulting conversation was fascinating ...indeed a worthwhile read ...I would have thumbs -upped your comment a subsequent replies but my vote fails to register

    respect

  • @gaiagale I understand. A man makes his life's work the study of the brain and has no understanding that the mind is something greater, grander, something of the metaphysical realm. This is very common. The ego is frightened when other ideas considered and attacks directly. "It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware." Albert Einstein "Constantly regard the universe as one living being," Marcus Aurelius

  • @amercury7 yes It is indeed "...entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware." Albert Einstein in fact the scientists seem to be becoming aware of 'worlds' both larger and smaller than were known in A. E.'s day

    ...and yes we might be wise to "Constantly regard the universe as one living being," Marcus Aurelius

  • hot chick in the first row..

  • @raileanulucian The blonde in the white dress?

  • @chinito0604 yes

  • @raileanulucian ok i agree ^^

  • @raileanulucian oh my god did you see that woman in the front row?

    she was totally a woman.

    totally.

    so hot

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  • Mind=blown.

  • The notion that there is a 'reason' for evolutionary results is faulty if you take it literally, which is the only sense in which a singular reason could exist. Figuratively speaking there are a number of reasons why brains evolved. If it's a matter of first priority, the initial figurative reason it is surely about movement control. Scientists of all people should realize the need for specificity, and it seems a little lost on this fellow who is unfortunately guilty of runaway reductionism.

  • @dookiecheez an interesting comment ...I would have thumbs-upped but my vote fails to register

  • It is obvious that brains exists for the zombies to have something to eat, the same way the sunflower exists to power an entire infantry.

    And, yes, this is a reference to something.

  • @maliciousMayfly A reference to something awesome.

    "Dawn of the Daisy" ftw

  • @maliciousMayfly Plants vs. Zombies :)

  • Interesting talking, but..

    Stephen Hawking's brain for instance... think about it.

  • @amjams That is why we call what he has a dissability.

  • @FosbackFilms

    His body is disabled. His brain, on the other hand, is more capable than most people's. Not moving doesn't make it any less of a brain like this guy indirectly suggests.

  • @amjams I don't think he was suggesting that the brain was only useful for movement. Just that movement was its primary purpose.

  • @amjams Are you being serious or funny...?

  • @oSoloDolo

    Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. The talker directly or indirectly states that a brain's value come only from it causing movement. Hawking has one of the greatest brains of his time despite being motionless. And even the way he manages to keep communicating with the outer world requires no complex muscle movement. and this goes against this guy's idea of assessing a brain's value. That is all.

  • @amjams I think you might have missed the point of the talk. He's basically asking "Why don't plants have brains?" and answering, "Because they don't move." If an individual member of some random species loses a limb and somehow manages to kill and eat more critters in its lifetime than most other individuals, that has no bearing on what the limb's original evolutionary purpose was or the value of that purpose to all the species who have limbs.

  • @shiftyjake Fair enough, and I'm convinced that complex movement could be the reason why natural selection favored brains, but that being said, in the case of humans, we must acknowledge the other aspects of the brain, even if proven to be incidental... so his research is brilliant, but his presentation was too materialistic for my taste.

  • @amjams an interesting discussion to read

    thanks for making time to comment and in turn ...to reply

  • @amjams To each his own. I think even Wolpert would agree that once the simplest brains developed for movement, evolutionary pressures favored other features as well, like abstract thought in humans. It's just all built on a common foundation.

  • @amjams indeed

  • that cat is so smart hehe

  • computers don't understand chess they just calculate a stupid  amount of lines or refer to human opening books

  • @sausage4mash who's to say that's not all chess really is?

  • @roidroid I'd say GM's play with intuition this comes from pattern recognition ,a GM will not look at all the moves he/she will pick a few candidate moves .but there again it's seldom calculated they look at the end result . like if you image going shopping you may just imagine key parts of the trip not step by step . computers are really dumb .I know I've written a chess programme :) but in the future who knows

  • @sausage4mash as far as i know the only goal of chess is to win.

    If the computer is beating these GMs, then IT'S THE GMs who arn't playing chess properly, they're failures.

    Harsh i know, but think about it. Is the ultimate goal of the game of chess REALLY to make plays based on intuition, pattern recognition, misdirection etc? Not really. Sure it makes it more fun and interesting when playing against a human opponent, but the goal of the game of chess is not to be fun and interesting.

  • @roidroid I don't think you understand what I'm saying ,the fact that a human can still beat these machines is testament to the human mind ,the computers are basically cheating ,if you had written a chess programme as I've you'd get what I'm saying ,in the game of GO computers are hopeless ( too many permutations), when you take away their ability to calculate millions of lines (as opposed to a chess player looking at a dozen lines ) they are stupid .

  • @sausage4mash technically the human brain is subconsciously calculating more lines than you are giving it credit for. Mental processes that we are conscious of, make up only a small segment of our brain's activity. I suspect a lot of the "useful calculations" are happening subconsciously and automatically in the GM's visual and spacial regions of the brain, before they are even aware of checking lines. Or to put it another way, this is what you are calling "Intuition". It's just calculation.

  • @roidroid nope that's not how it works ,there has been study in this field it's all about patterns ,with GM's their vast knowledge of familiar patterns seem to be stored in the language centres of the brain ,but it is not lists of calculations ,it's familiar patterns ,if you see a GM play bullet it's often to a high standard and it's played way to fast for any calculating beyond 1 or 2 moves it's all patterns .if you're interested I'll dig out some info on this

  • @sausage4mash your brute-force chess program might not have done pattern recognition, but others do.

    i assure you that pattern recog can be simmered down to calculations, i suppose you could describe the evolving table of variables as nothing more than a "list" if you ignored the fact that the data stored amongst neurons can also be stored as a "list". There's no magic here, it's all essentially just number crunching, regardless of wetware or hardware.

    Thoughts are merely hard to debug atm.

  • @roidroid are you not interested in the scientific studies done in this field of research ? I'll dig out the papers for you .

  • @sausage4mash oh. Well i guess to be honest i'm not really too interested, until it seems that the paper contradicts my points (ie: parallel subconscious mental processes silently bolster conscious decision making). From your description of the paper so far, it doesn't seem like there is a contradiction. Which is why i'm currently concentrating on our conversation at hand, as i suspect we may be miscommunicating in some way.

    Youtube is hard to chat with :(

  • what a smart dude.

  • Mc Lovin's dad by any chance?

  • Our brain are always "on the go" mode... cool.

  • Feldenkrais feldenkrais feldenkrais

  • wow...one of the best TED I have watched

  • 13:57 is the point where I would have simply punched my brother and informed him I'm right as always and get out of my room!!

  • ....cnidarians dont have brains and they move quite fine

  • 14:06 Hottayyyy

  • He went over 16 minutes.....no fair!

  • I wish we could have the usual clever, funny, and/or profound top rated comments instead of just the 0:15

  • @JLJorgenson18 Ja hope they will start fixing the sound some time. It is even more nerving tbh.

  • 9:50, the man with the glasses and blue shirt looks like he totally understands everything.

  • Sounds more like baseless conjecture than science. TED is kind of hit and miss.

  • @Ryakki there is no S in TED

  • in response to his last point about vision, how then would he explain bats? they lack vision though are very capable-in fact extremely precise-of movement.

  • @Dhragonfly

    He never said vision was required for movement. Bats obviously use sonar instead. But in the context of humans, it is important to understand vision in relation to movement.

  • good talk. interestingly, the start uses the exact same argument, almost in the same way, that Rodolfo Llinas made in "I of the Vortex" (2002) if anyone is curious about more sources

  • 11:33 that's how you jerk someones bird.

  • the drama of life so woven by thought and emotion, yet 'tis but a mere afterthought of the shelter that houses it.

  • @xjustamem0ryx your comment came up when I used the google browser along with others of course (I checked several site but failed to actually find the words) I'm curious to the origin thanks

  • @gaiagale

    me xD

  • @xjustamem0ryx brilliant! ...a thought as astute and profound as it is poetic

  • I wonder what he thinks about parkour and free running

  • @hilariofreire

    Brain Sex?

  • @hilariofreire roughly the same classical musicians would think about deathmetal, acid trance or dubstep? Loads of noise, but once you understand the patterns and purpose of the noise it can become beautiful.

  • 0:15

    2:11 :D

  • We think with our minds; we move with our brains. You are not a gray slug wrapped in a wonderful hasmat suit. You are a mind that is connected to a brain that is connect to a body.