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He has a very limited definition of a "computer". His description is how modern computers work. But that's not strictly what a computer could be. When people c
by UK-AL 10y ago
He has a very limited definition of a "computer". His description is how modern computers work. But that's not strictly what a computer could be.
When people compare a computer to a brain. They are not saying it's like a modern pc. They are saying it like a computer in a loose sense. A lot of people don't get that, they think were comparing to the thing on desk. A computer can mean lots of things with many different approaches.
For example
"computers do store exact copies of data" - They don't have to? Just our current implementation does.
- panglott 10y agoConceptual metaphors lead you astray when you take them too far. You can note some similarities these have, but the author cites lots of examples of people assuming that human brains store, retrieve, and process information just in the way that PCs do.
- UK-AL 10y agoJust because it doesn't store it the way traditional pc's do, doesn't mean its not a computer.
- criddell 10y agoSome people forget that there's more than one computer architecture. A computer doesn't even have to be digital.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoBut that's expanding the definition to "Arbitrary processing architecture we haven't even invented yet which really could simulate a human brain, if only we knew what it was and how to build it - which we don't, but that's just an engineering problem."
- UK-AL 10y agoA computer is something that computes. Doesn't really matter how it does it.
- chongli 10y agoAnd what does it mean for something to compute?
- UK-AL 10y agoBeing able to follow an algorithm, a set of steps(parallel or in series) to reach a result. The brain has input, goes through various connections, and you end up with a result.
- criddell 10y agoThe steps don't even have to be discrete. An analog computer can give a continuously varying response to varying inputs with no sequential operations.
- chongli 10y agoSo is fire a computer? It goes through a series of steps to reach a result.
- UK-AL 10y agoIs fire able to follow an algorithm? I mean some creative person could probably make a computer out of using fire.
- chongli 10y agoWell, what is an algorithm? Anyway, before we stray too far from the point I was hoping to make, I'll claim that when most people use the word "compute" they mean a particular task performed at the behest of a human being. This sort of definition is problematic if we're ever to attempt to build an artificial brain or to encounter intelligent alien life radically different from our own. It all falls back to the problem of agency and the philosophical concept of the self.
- criddell 10y agoAnalog computers have a pretty rich history.
- ef4 10y agoIt's definitely not arbitrary. We have solid mathematical definitions of computing that are not tied to any particular implementation. Saying "the brain is not a computer" is a shorthand for "the brain is not Turing equivalent". Now, that could be true. But if it is, it would be the first time anybody has found a physical system in our universe that can't be simulated by a Turing machine. It seems like quite a stretch.
- ikeboy 10y agoIt also never gets into whether the brain is an exception to our laws of physics; if it is not, then it's trivially computable because the laws of physics are. If you're going to argue the brain is not a computer, you need to give plausible reasons for thinking the laws of physics are incomplete (which is what Penrose does, for example). Any quantum randomness in the brain can be simulated because we know how to generate quantum randomness, then just feed that into a deterministic physics emulator. To deny that requires new laws of physics.
- throwaway76543 10y agoHell, even my current implementation doesn't store exact copies -- whenever I use a lossy algorithm.
- tremon 10y agoAs a matter of fact, many computers do not store exact copies of data. The data may be rearranged or compressed on many different levels. The data may be stored in such a way that an exact copy can be retrieved, but it is not necessarily stored as an exact copy. Moreover, if you include the various checksum algorithms from different vendors as part of "storing", then even if you perform a bit-for-bit copy between different disks, they are not stored exactly the same.