Underrated reasons to be thankful V

Re:Underrated reasons to be thankful V by kragen on Thursday November 27, 2025 @08:46PM (#46074837)

We haven't found anything in nature that resembles reverse-mode automatic differentiation, either in evolution or in neuroscience.

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Re:Underrated reasons to be thankful V by mountainreason on Friday November 28, 2025 @08:03PM (#46084342)

What would that look like. Is there an implementation of the finite difference method in biology somehow?

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Re:Underrated reasons to be thankful V by kragen on Saturday November 29, 2025 @07:33AM (#46087058)

I'd be surprised.

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Re:Underrated reasons to be thankful V by mountainreason on Saturday November 29, 2025 @03:37PM (#46090570)

Yeah thanks, me too. So I'm wondering what point 22 is getting at. How could that even be possible?

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Re:Underrated reasons to be thankful V by kragen on Sunday November 30, 2025 @12:34PM (#46098649)

Biology can use discrete methods; we have discrete neurons (and other cells), discrete chemical species like ATP, discrete amino acids, discrete genes made of discrete nucleotides, etc.

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Re:Underrated reasons to be thankful V by mountainreason on Saturday December 06, 2025 @09:02AM (#46173431)

Fur sure. But I don't get how that leads to an expectation that our biology is computing and utilizing derivatives in a computational graph.

Point 22 seems to imply that the other finds it notable that that isn't happening.

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Re:Underrated reasons to be thankful V by mountainreason on Sunday December 07, 2025 @09:53AM (#46182073)

Author*

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