4 ms·

My brain is not a silicon-based processing unit with a von Neumann architecture. My brain, however, calculates, computes, stores, retrieves... It's a computer

• panglott 10y ago
  That's his whole point. It doesn't store or retrieve.
  • criddell 10y ago
    And is that the defining characteristic of a computer? I don't think it is.
  • hasenj 10y ago
    Then how come that when I see your comment, my brain knows what letter each symbol represents, and knows what each word means, and can construe a meaning out of the sentence?
  • delinka 10y ago
    Indeed it does. If not, how then can you, "recall" the names of your family upon seeing their faces? You've stored a representation of each face, you've stored their names, and you retrieve that information to maintain the relationship.
    • karmajunkie 10y ago
      pattern recognition. you see a face, and the visual stimulus refires the same set of neurons, which then fire additional neurons, creating a chain that eventually fires off the set that is connected with the sound of that face. This is a pattern of neuron activity, and its not the same as retrieval.
      • ef4 10y ago
        You're just describing a different way to physically distribute the bits. From a mathematical standpoint it's still very clear that information-theoretic bits are going in and coming back out again. Or to put it another way, if you really think that isn't computing, you need to argue that this new piece of hardware also isn't computing: https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/05/Google-supercharges-machine-learning-tasks-with-custom-chip.html https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/05/Google-supercha...
        • karmajunkie 10y ago
          ah, no, its not just twiddling bits. You can make analogies to that if it makes it easier to describe a process, but all analogies break down. One may create a mathematical model of the processes but unless that model mimics and predicts the biology so closely as to be indistinguishable from the reality, its still just a model. Your second assertion is simply wrong. Asserting that what the brain does isn't the same as what a computer does simply doesn't imply that a computer designed to mimic some aspects of biological neural nets is not a computer.
          • ef4 10y ago
            > twiddling bits This kind of phrasing implies that you aren't hearing what I'm saying. You're still picturing physical bits that can be twiddled. I'm not making an analogy to any physical bits at all, I'm not even making an analogy. I'm talking about bits in the information-theoretic sense. If I can send a signal to a person and as a result that person can do better than random at picking an intended symbol out of a set of symbols, then bits of information were conveyed. If the person can do the same thing at a later point in time, then bits of information were also stored. No analogies are required, this is literally the definition of "information" and "bits" since 1948.
            • karmajunkie 10y ago
              I'm hearing what you're saying, and if you want to take the broadest possible definition of a computer, then sure, the human brain is a computer. So is a protractor. Shadows on the ground could be used to "compute" the integration of a curve. But its pretty clear that this isn't the issue at hand in the OP.