A Thousand Brains

A New Theory of Intelligence

By: Jeff Hawkins, Richard Dawkins - introduction

Narrated by: Jamie Renell, Richard Dawkins

A "fascinating book" that will revolutionize our understanding of the brain and the future of AI (Financial Times)

For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence?

Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures to build a model of the world—not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought.

A Thousand Brains heralds a revolution in the understanding of intelligence. It is a big-think book, in every sense of the word.

Hawkins has Purchase on the "Easy" Problem

The Thousand Brains theory of intelligence - that the neocortex is composed of many thousands of columns of connected neural structures based on older grid and place cells, which create and link together models of the world, and also vote together to construct hierarchically more nested models - is brilliant.  The number of empirical constraints it solves is incredibly satisfying.  Citing just two examples, 1) what/where pathways in the brain are explained if "reference frames" attach to objects in the what pathway, but attach to our bodies in the where pathway, and 2) the perceptual binding problem is solved - when cortical columns agree on an object via consensus voting, they will naturally have different sensory inputs, thus they contribute diverse sensory models to a complete perception.  I'm being terse here because 1) this is incredibly exicting, and 2) the book is so smoothly written that it itself is the perfect way to get these ideas across.  No review will suffice.  So please, read this book!

I will only add, Hawkins is a thorough physicalist when it comes to consciousness, such that this and his previous book insist on using the word "intelligence" when one might want to see the word "consciousness".  Unlike his previous book, Hawkins confronts this notion and dedicates a chapter to it here, in which the "hard" problem ala Chalmers is recognized.  As a physicalist who acknowledges the hard problem myself, I nonetheless find Hawkins' commentary here unsatisfying.  For example, is the qualia of green a cortical map of green experiences with dimensions corresponding to green surface orientations?  I'm not convinced.  However, as Hawkins notes, qualia indeed seem "out there".  In other words, qualia have the quale of location, an aspect nicely satisfied by reference frames at the core of the Thousand Brains theory.  A theory which, as testified to in the beginning of this review, is brilliant and satisfying in its own right.

Part 1: Great, Part 2: Good, Part 3: Boring

I liked the model of the neocortex. I liked the commentary on fears of existential risk from AI. I found the commentary on the human condition to be true, but not revelatory. I stopped midway through Part 3. Overall, good work, Jeff! Worth the listen :)

Inspiring book about neuroscience and the future of the human kind

Great introduction into how our brain works. Doesn’t require any special knowledge in neuroscience.
In the 2nd pet author raises import questions about our future.

Interesting discussion, not quite as revolutionary as described

I’m not sure that Hawkins has discovered a description of Brain function never thought of before. I have read other books positing very similar theories of the way the Brain combines sensory inputs with processing by the Neo Cortex.

This line of research is where we will ultimately come to understand this incredible machine: the Brain, so I’m not criticizing this work. More thinking like this is exactly what we need. My concern may also be a product of my reaction to the tone of the author’s words. There is an arrogance and self-satisfaction that I shrink from. Whether this tone arises from the written word or the tone the narrator has taken in this audiobook is a question in my mind.

Some of Hawkins/Dawkins proposals for the direction future Human choices are unsatisfying, but they do claim their purpose is to provoke thought and discussion. I guess they have achieved their goals. They have made me think. That’s a good thing.

Really interesting, but overextends himself in the last portion.

I enjoyed this book for the most part. Interesting theory and reasonably well explained. I thought the author overextended himself and tried too hard in the last sections of the book.