If you just have a single problem to solve then fine go ahead and use a neural network. But if you want to do science and understand how to choose architectures or how to go to a new problem you have to understand what different architectures can and cannot do.

Actually I think my view is compatible with much of the work going on now in neuroscience and psychology where people are studying the relationship of consciousness to neural and cognitive processes without really trying to reduce it to those processes.

It is literally the case that learning languages makes you smarter. The neural networks in the brain strengthen as a result of language learning.

When I'm writing my neural pathways get blocked. I can't read. I can barely hold a conversation without forgetting words and names. I wish I could wear the same clothes and eat the same food each day.

In my books the technology that I choose to talk about has to serve the themes. What that means is that I end up having to cut out a lot of cool technology that would be really fun to describe and play with but which would just confuse everybody. So in 'Amped ' I focus on neural implants.