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Manuel Brenner
Manuel Brenner

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Published in Towards Data Science

·Pinned

Why We Might Be Looking At The Brain In The Wrong Way

…with important implications for AI — The mind tries to understand the world in terms of concepts, most of which are dressed in language and in some cases, in mathematics. But our conceptual understanding of the world suffers from a chicken-and-egg problem: where do the concepts in which this understanding is modeled come from in the…

Neuroscience

10 min read

Why We Might Be Looking At The Brain In The Wrong Way
Why We Might Be Looking At The Brain In The Wrong Way

May 20

The Importance of Noise

On the role of uncertainty in evolution, markets, neuroscience, and AI — The world is unpredictable in many ways. This has been the natural state of affairs for all living beings fighting an uphill battle for survival within an ever-evolving world. And while modern life has given us more certainties, with scientific theories setting out to explain the mess around us, science…

Science

7 min read

The Importance of Noise
The Importance of Noise

Published in Towards Data Science

·Jan 5

Understanding Markov Chains

And their connections to Neuroscience, AI and Russian Poetry — “My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness? What indeed has become of my youth?” ― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin It might seem strange to start an article on Markov chains (also called Markov processes) with a quote from a 19th-century Russian poem, but there is a surprising…

Science

10 min read

Understanding Markov Chains
Understanding Markov Chains

Dec 2, 2021

The Mathematics of Finding Your Soulmate

Keep on with the force don’t stop Don’t stop ’til you get enough. - Michael Jackson The world is a rich place of opportunities waiting to be discovered, of actions to be taken and choices to be made. We mere mortals have to navigate this world with partial and biased…

Love

6 min read

The Mathematics of Finding Your Soulmate
The Mathematics of Finding Your Soulmate

Published in Snipette

·Jul 30, 2021

Superstitious Pigeons

How humans find meaning when they can’t find the answers. — The 14th century. Times are tough — the Hundred Years’ War is raging, newly freed peasants are trying to find a place in society, and a plague is afoot. The Black Death has already killed a third of the population in some parts of Europe, and no one really knows…

Behavior

7 min read

Superstitious Pigeons
Superstitious Pigeons

Jul 25, 2021

What You Need To Know When Working From Home

How to synchronize your biological clock using light — Seeing the light is a choice, not seeing the light is no choice. Douglas Horton The pandemic has changed the working habits of millions of people around the globe. For many, remote work has quickly turned from an emergency solution to the new status quo, with many companies offering their…

Science

5 min read

What You Need To Know When Working From Home
What You Need To Know When Working From Home

Mar 28, 2021

More Is Different

On the limitations of reductionism — “The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe”. P.W.Anderson What is the most real thing in the world? Is it the number pi? Is it the quantum fields merrily vibrating…

Science

10 min read

More Is Different
More Is Different

Feb 27, 2021

Dopamine, Richard Wagner, and the Love Death

On the interplay between art, emotions, and our brains that construct them — “‘Tristan und Isolde’ is the central work of all music history, the hub of the wheel… I have spent my life since I first read it, trying to solve it. It is incredibly prophetic.” - Leonard Bernstein Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde from 1865 was one of the most…

Music

8 min read

Dopamine, Richard Wagner, and the Love Death
Dopamine, Richard Wagner, and the Love Death

Published in Towards Data Science

·Feb 7, 2021

The Brain’s Most Precious Resource

The role of attention in neuroscience, deep learning, and everyday life — The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is one of the most intricate machines mankind has ever built. When it’s running, every second approximately one billion particles smash into each other at velocities close to the speed of light, probing physics beyond the edges of the current standard model of particle physics. …

Neuroscience

10 min read

The Brain’s Most Precious Resource
The Brain’s Most Precious Resource

Published in Towards Data Science

·Dec 29, 2020

The Power of Latent Variable Models

Looking beyond the data surface — “Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Science firmly rests on the power of observation. Models triumph or fall after they are compared to observations in the real world. But in more sophisticated models, something very…

Machine Learning

8 min read

The Power of Latent Variable Models
The Power of Latent Variable Models
Manuel Brenner

Manuel Brenner

I love new ideas. My science podcast: https://anchor.fm/acit-science Connect via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuel-brenner-772261191

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