Invented or discovered? Are neural networks a fundamental pattern of reality?
drabarca_ai · reddit · 2026-08-18
A philosophical discussion: we treat artificial neural networks as a human invention, but perhaps they're a mathematical structure that always existed and we merely discovered one way to use it. The author notes the universe repeatedly produces complexity from vast networks of simple interacting elements — neurons to intelligence, evolution to complex life, societies to collective behavior, LLMs to emergent reasoning — and asks whether neural networks are just another technology or a fundamental pattern of reality waiting to be discovered, inviting physicists, mathematicians, AI researchers, and engineers to weigh in.
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