Just because I felt like I wasn’t alienating enough people on the internet, I posted 10 times in a row to Twitter. The following is a list of questions that I am currently working on to varying degrees. Many of them have answers in textbooks, others are on the cutting edge, and others probably will come unraveled if I think about them enough. In no particular order:

• What does the Thalamus do?
• Can synapses migrate?
• Do lesions to the hippocampus destroy existing memories?
• Is there a qualitative difference between semantic memory and episodic memory (i.e. is episodic memory just memory of historical facts)?
• How can you get a signal back from its frequency distribution (related: why is the Fourier transform its own inverse)?
• Is Buddhism just a coping mechanism for living in a painful world?
• What is the anatomical difference between short and long term memory?
• How do you find the probability of an observation (“X”) given *not* A, where A is some general hypothesis in Bayesian inference? (i.e. in finding P(A|X), you need P(X|~A). Where do you get it?)
• Why is Newton’s Method for optimization faster than gradient decent (in computational time, not steps!)?
• What is the structure of the top-level control system in the human mind?
• Can all goal-seeking agents be thought to be utility maximizers?
• Does Bayesian inference work for low-level vision systems?
• What is a Bayes-Net?
• How does a Quantum Computer avoid entangling the user?
• Why is Quantum Teleportation exciting, again?
• What is the core structure of a cortical microcolumn?
• What is the Laplace operator?
• Does transhumanism not naturally oppose Buddhism?
• Is there anything more interesting in the cerebellum than a bunch of fine-tuning circuits?

And now, because this auto-posts to twitter, my tweeples get to see yet more pontificating float by. Ah, 2011, I’ll miss you; once the robots get good at serving up only interesting text, where we go to blather into the night?