not a surprise
¶ by Rob FrieselVia Boing^2: “Surprise! Computer scientists model the exclamation point” – – /sigh again?
As A will no doubt attest, this is nothing new. There have been biological and mathematical models of “surprisingness” for quite a while. (Decades, if I’m not mistaken.) Does science have to take place at UC Berkley USC to be important or something? Or is it just news “all over again” because it finally made it over there from Cornell and Princeton and Brown etc.?
And (again, as I’m sure A will attest) the thing that causes the most /shudder here is the eye movement stuff. “Eye movements” (also called “saccades”) are all the raging vogue among neuroscientists right now. Which I think is funny because that fails to challenge the assumption that eye movements are (in and of themselves) the most salient piece of biological feedback to the environment.
UPDATE: After a brief email exchange w/ David Pescovitz @ BoingBoing, I took his advice and fired off the following to the USC contact listed in at the beginning of the article:
Subject: re: “Surprise!”
Date: November 29, 2005 9:39:00 PM EST
To: mankin {at} usc {period} eduEric–
re: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/uosc-scs112805.php
These are very interesting findings mentioned in the above press release. I was curious where I might find out more about the research that they’ve cited. Specifically, I’m wondering in what ways their work has paralleled or considered that of Rescorla & Wagner (1972) and Pearce & Hall (1980). Their assertion that surprise “lacked a formal definition” seems to fly in the face of over 30 years of learning theory.
Let’s see where this goes…
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