Epilogue

Abstract

Early on in our work, we have established the fundamental form of the components that we were going to work with. This form was given as the differential equations that govern networks of pointlike LIF neurons with exponential synaptic kernels. This particular level of mathematical abstraction was chosen both for analytical tractability and for compatibility with the studied neuromorphic systems—which further restrict this otherwise well-defined form by burdening it with various distortions.

Like organisms evolved in gentle tide pools, who migrate to freezing oceans or steaming jungles by developing metabolisms, mechanisms, and behaviors workable in those harsher and vaster environments, our descendants, able to change their representations at will, may develop means to venture far from the comfortable realms we consider reality into arbitrarily strange worlds. Their techniques will be as meaningless to us as bicycles are to fish, but perhaps we can stretch our common-sense-hobbled imaginations enough to peer a short distance into this odd territory.

Hans Moravec, Simulation, Consciousness, Existence, 1998