Lumifer comments on Open thread, Nov. 16 - Nov. 22, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I've been hearing about all this amazing stuff done with recurrent neural networks, convolutional neural networks, random forests, etc. The problem is that it feels like voodoo to me. "I've trained my program to generate convincing looking C code! It gets the indentation right, but the variable use is a bit off. Isn't that cool?" I'm not sure, it sounds like you don't understand what your program is doing. That's pretty much why I'm not studying machine learning right now. What do you think?
Clarke's Third Law :-)
Anyway, you gain understanding of complicated techniques by studying them and practicing them. You won't understand them unless you study them -- so I'm not sure why you are complaining about lack of understanding before even trying.