Every advanced AI runs on an equation. Your brain has been running it for 500 million years. A neuroscientist proved it by accident. That accident changed two fields at once.
Really enjoyed this piece, the spiral framing makes a lot of sense. It seems to me that once a system can reliably recognize a pattern, the natural next step is to start predicting another layer up. If you can see “bell → light → juice,” wouldn’t you eventually look for what’s pointing to the bell in the first place?
That shift — from predicting the next event to predicting the underlying generator — feels like the beginning of higher‑order thinking. And it also seems like the place where a real mechanism could emerge, one that pushes these spirals toward a more unified theory of how learning systems build new layers of themselves over time.
Fantastic piece.
Really enjoyed this piece, the spiral framing makes a lot of sense. It seems to me that once a system can reliably recognize a pattern, the natural next step is to start predicting another layer up. If you can see “bell → light → juice,” wouldn’t you eventually look for what’s pointing to the bell in the first place?
That shift — from predicting the next event to predicting the underlying generator — feels like the beginning of higher‑order thinking. And it also seems like the place where a real mechanism could emerge, one that pushes these spirals toward a more unified theory of how learning systems build new layers of themselves over time.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. Right, that shift is the beginning of a kind of higher-order thinking, and it’s how most biological intelligence evolved.