Scanned

We need a map

1.34 PM , Jodhpur :

She sat there on the lunch table with Siddharth and Meghana looking at the flocking crowd surrounding her. It was a busy restaurant with people instantly occupying the tables after it was left vacant. The waiter arrived offered menu and drifted in seconds from there to another table. They had gone to Mehrangarh fort that morning. It was an ancient fort built around 1460. Imposing thick walls , intricate carvings  , expansive courtyards, a rock park , temple and museum  within , it had everything  to keep one at awe. The waiter arrived again to take the orders. Siddharth teased myrah as she added a ton of preferences and changes to the dish on their menu,  she wanted to order. With her on board , it was obvious that it is going to take longer for the food to arrive. So, as they sat waiting for their dishes to come , they set on a discussion pertaining to a subject they had.

"Take a three year old to the zoo , and she intuitively knows that the long-necked creature nibbling leaves is the same thing as the giraffe in her coloring book. that superficially easy feat in reality is quite sophisticated. The cartoon drawing is a frozen silhouette of simple lines , while the living animal is awash in color, texture , movement. It can contort into different shapes and looks different from every angle.Humans excel at this kind of task. We can effortlessly grasp most important features of an object from just a few examples and apply those features to the unfamiliar. Other electronic objects of great use , say computers , typically need to sort through a whole database of  giraffes , shown in many settings and from different perspectives , to learn to accurately recognize the animal. Visual identification is one of the many arenas where humans beat computers. We're also better at finding relevant information in a flood of data , at solving unstructured problems , and at learning without supervision , as a baby learns about gravity when she plays with her lego blocks. We dominate at some frontiers. Flexibility in thinking , aren't we all masters in that ? " snapped Myrah.

Siddharth jumped out in excitement , not because he had something to put forward to the discussion , but because the food had arrived. Scrumptious Dal-baati was served. Meghana exclaimed " We are super superior. Who else can do analysis by synthesis so creatively ? The only challenge now is to figure out what those wiring rules mean algorithmically."

"Yeah , we need a map. A map of cortex and a map of this queer city that also says where i can grab my redbull." replied Siddharth licking and emptying the plate quite literally.

"Humans are much , much better generalists" ~ Tai Sing Lee , Neuroscientist , CMU

Minutes later , Myrah's phone buzzed . It was Apte. She had news.