[Sigia-l] Self organising Information (Was Data as Information)

[Ted Han]

On 6/28/05, Reinoud Bosman <Reinoud.Bosman at mediacatalyst.com> wrote:
> The brain/nervous system in its early growing stages works in a way that can
> be very easily adapted to hyperlinked information.
> 
> When a neural path grows it initially creates a lot of connections with
> other cells. Over time the connections that are used most will grow
> stronger. The others die off. This is (very simplified) the 'hardware' part
> of memories being stored in our nervous system. A very Darwinian process:
> the fittest connections survive.

No!  No!  Don't make this analogy!  This is only true in the vaguest
of senses, and it's not darwinian in the least!

While it's true that neuronal connections grow and decay primarily in
an adaptive fashion, the metaphor stops there.  Connection strength
for neurons is determined primarily as a function of the electrical
excitation, whereas hyperlinks are either on or off, and it's not
clear what the nature of a link between two sites is.

It's not darwinian at all (it is adaptive), because there isn't any
spawning, nor trait changes.  (and just to continue harping on a pet
peeve of mine, evolution, or even darwinism is -not- about survival of
the fittest [tangentially, darwin never said this].  It is survival of
the fit -enough-.  You can be horribly adapted to your environment and
so long as your flaws don't kill you, you're going to keep propagating
your genes.)

-T

(Stop evolution abuse!)