Why does deep and cheap learning work so well?

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why does deep and cheap learning work so well?
Henry W. Lin, Max Tegmark, arXiv, 2016/09/12

There's a good Technology Review summary of this article. In a nutshell: why do deep learning algorithms, which simulate neural networks, work so well? Mathematically, they should be much less effective, because they are attempting to select the best answer from an enormous number of possible outcomes. More...