I’m not sure what you think I’m arguing against but saying that it matches with one of the cognitive models du jour is… odd.

The problem with the hopfield model is it simplifies the brain too much. The base unit is “the neuron”. Ok… but what about the Astrocyte? Mathematically you can write it as a different kind of neuron. Or ignore it. But why, as a biologist, must I buy this model which ignores the third partner of every synapse, which has an entirely distinct physical tiling architecture compared to neurons, and which are at a temporal offset from neurons?

Those facts about the brain are missing from the model from 1982. Which isn’t shocking since we didn’t know all this then.

Are you saying the brain is a Hopfield network, and that’s it? Because later you indicate otherwise. Kinda confused what I’m to make of it.

> Again, my impression is that the original author's idea was about capacity in general, then he gave an analogy. The analogy was wrong, but your reply went way beyond his specific analogy to the extreme of discarding memory itself as useful concept. To be clear, I agree that it is distributed and lossy and time-dependent. I agree it is not just a simple read-off of a static chunk with a fixed address.

Ok, but my argument wasn’t with the OP mentioning capacity, but with their analogy. Am I not allowed to break down that analogy with evidence?

> I would say that is both non-falsifiable and well-accepted.

Why’s it non-falsifiable? If you do find a single computational paradigm that explains all brain dynamics we can measure, then you have falsified the hypothesis that it’s an integration of multiple computational types.

That actual evidence already gives the notion credence doesn’t make it unfalsifiable in principle.

> https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262041997/theoretical-neuroscie... might interest you

Went through the description. Doubt it’ll interest me. As a rule I’ve stopped giving too much time to models that predate the last decades actual mechanistic facts. They’re fun curiosities, but hard to take seriously anymore. Here especially, the absence of astrocytes in the picture makes it hard to buy they have anything real to say about the mechanics at play. Half the cells of the brain not in the explanatory picture is just too likely to fail.

(note: I’m certain astrocytes are mentioned as support cells, or maybe regulators… but we just know a lot more now due to new techniques that makes downgrading them like that questionable science to me)