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jacob_cannell comments on The Brain as a Universal Learning Machine - Less Wrong
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Well, the eyes are at the front of the head, but the optic nerves connect to the brain at the back, and they also cross at the optic chiasm. Axons also cross contralaterally in the spinal cord and if I recall correctly there are various nerves that also don't take the shortest path.
This seems to me as evidence that the nervous system is not strongly optimized for latency.
This is a total misconception, and it is a good example of the naive engineer fallacy (jumping to the conclusion that a system is poorly designed when you don't understand how the system actually works and why).
Remember the distributed software modules - including V1 - have components in multiple physical modules (cortex, cerebellum, thalamus, BG). Not every DSM has components in all subsystems, but V1 definitely has a thalamic relay component (VGN).
The thalamus/BG is in the center of the brain, which makes sense from wiring minimization when you understand the DPM system. Low freq/compressed versions of the cortical map computations can interact at higher speeds inside the small compact volume of the BG/thalamus. The BG/thalamus basically contains a microcosm model of the cortex within itself.
The thalamic relay comes first in sequential processing order, so moving cortical V1 closer to the eyes wouldn't help in the slightest. (Draw this out if it doesn't make sense)