User:Wolfworks

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[edit] Me

My name is Josh Bacigalupi and I live in San Francisco. I'm a regular user of Wikipedia and an infrequent commentor. I have yet to edit an actual page. However, I do read the discussion pages at times and contribute to some.

[edit] My Background

I have an undergraduate degree from UCSB in Environmental Sciences with upper division work in Physical Chemistry. I then received a Masters in Architecture. I've been practicing architecture for about 10 years now. Concurrently, I've been researching a novel approach to General AI that involves a hybrid digital/analog mechanism.

I regularly attend the Helen Wills Neuroscience lecture series at UC Berkeley. I'm also taking numerous coarses in Java and analog/digital circuits. I also had the opportunity to work on a behavioral science experiment in Dr. Levi's lab at UCB. I've attended a number of Cognitive Computing symposiums and I'm an avid reader of both technical books for the layperson and white papers (not for the layperson) related to neuroscience and mind. I co-organize a philosophy meetup group in San Francisco.

[edit] My Bias

A habit learned in design school, I generally question the preconceptions of the current paradigm when the goals of that paradigm are struggling to be achieved. Specifically, the project of AI has had minimal success in achieving mind over the last half century. I submit that the advances that have been made correlate to our improved technologies and not to our improved understanding of mind. I further submit that this is due to the preconception that the mind and/or brain is a digital computer. This is a deceptive analogy since the digital computer is both conceivable while it also performs certain domain specific tasks much better than our brains can. Again, however, my design education has cautioned against using an analogy byond its reach.

Of course, I try to keep this bias out of my Wiki contributions. Never the less, I can't deny my personal perspective. I invite anyone to challange my contributions if they feel my bias is molding my input too much.

Cheers, Wolfworks (talk) 16:07, 13 May 2008 (UTC)