雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第9章:退隱山林(89)

They tAlked about the physiological basis of memory and of pattern recognition.

他們還討論了記憶和模式識別的生理基礎。

Young wrote:51 Dear Turing, I have been thinking more about your abstractions and hope that I grasp what you want of them. Although I know so little about it I should not despair of the matching process doing the trick.

楊寫信說：親愛的圖靈：我一直在考慮你的想法，希望我能理解你要做的東西。雖然我在這方面不是很懂，但我認爲，匹配過程是有可能存在捷徑的。

You have certainly missed a point if you suppose that to name a bus it must first be matched with everything from tea-pots to clouds.

你說當大腦要識別一輛巴士時，它需要遍歷從茶壺到雲彩的所有東西，逐個進行匹配，那麼你忽略了一點，大腦一定通過另外某種過程，

The brain surely has ways of shortening this process by the process—I take it—you call abstracting. Our weakness is that we have so little idea of the clues and code it uses.

對這種匹配進行了簡化——這裏按我理解——就是你說的抽象化。問題是，我們對大腦的運作機制所知甚少，

My whole thesis is that the variety of objects etc. are recognised by use of comparison with a relatively limited number of models.

我的觀點是，大腦在識別大量不同的事物時，是通過與相對有限的模型進行匹配的。

No doubt the process is a serial one, perhaps a filtering out of recognised features at each stage and then feeding back the rest through the system.

該過程無疑是分階段依次進行的，也許是在每個階段，對某些特徵進行過濾，然後把餘下的特徵繼續輸入系統。

This probably does not make much sense in exact terms and the only evidence for it is that people do group their reactions around relatively simple models—circle, god, father, machine, state, etc.

這在具體形式中可能不太好理解，唯一的證據是，人們會用相對簡單的模型，對自己的反應進行分類——圓、上帝、父親、機器、狀態，等等。

Can we get anywhere by determining the storage capacity given by 1010 neurons if arranged in various ways and assuming facilitation of pathways by use?

如果我們考慮神經元的各種可能的組織形式，並假設其路徑是最簡的，能否確定1010個神經元所支持的存儲容量？

Is there any finite number of sorts of arrangement that they could have?

它們的組織形式是不是有限的？

For example, each with 100 possible outputs to others arranged a) at random through the whole or b) with decreasing frequency with distance.

比如說，每個神經元會向隨機的，或者就近的神經元，輸出100種可能的信號。

Given any particular plan of feedback can one compare the storage capacity of these plans, assuming say a given increase of probability of re-use of a pathway with each time of use?

我們能否假設，一條路徑每次被使用時，其複用概率會有一個特定的增長，然後對各種組織形式的存儲容量進行比較？

This is all very vague. If you have any ideas about the next important sorts of question to ask do let me know. Would it be a great help if we could give some sort of specification of the destinations of the output (within the cortex) of each cell? I feel we ought to be able to disentangle the pattern somehow. Yours, John Young.

這一切都非常讓人迷糊。如果你有其它的想法，請告訴我。如果我們能對皮層細胞的輸出終點給出某種說明，是否會有很大幫助？我覺得我們應該通過某種方法，解開這個模式。

你的朋友約翰·楊