zlacker

>>joelg+(OP)
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.

"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied.

"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.

"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.

"So that the room will be empty."

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

RIP.

>>Tossro+81
It is now several decades later.

Do TensorFlow/CNN builders use random initial configurations, or custom designed stuctures?

>>gohrt+F4
NN weights need to start random because otherwise two weights with exactly the same value can get "stuck" and be unable to differentiate. Backpropagation relies on starting random patterns that kind of match so that it can fine tune them.

But the weights are often initialized to be really close to zero.