Urgh, one nonsensical statement after another. I think I need a shower after reading that. Most of the authors' misguided ramblings seem to stem from a very na

Urgh, one nonsensical statement after another. I think I need a shower after reading that. Most of the authors' misguided ramblings seem to stem from a very naive misunderstanding of the word "computer", i.e. that in a technical context it refers to any system capable of universal computation (AKA "Turing complete"). "Universal computation" has precise Mathematical definitions, but can roughly be understood as the "complexity limit" of the Universe; just as nothing can go faster than light, nothing can exhibit behaviour that's more complex than that of a Turing complete system. The proof boils down to showing that a Turing complete system can, given a specially constructed input stimulus, produce response behaviour which is equivalent to any other system. These days, we call the system the "hardware" and the stimulus the "software". As an analogy, the author's arguments would be like claiming the laws of thermodynamics don't apply to the brain, since we have no theory of conciousness and it certainly doesn't look like a steam engine. Just like "computer" in computer science, the word "engine" has a precise meaning in thermodynamics (any system which transforms energy from one form to another), and we don't need to know the precise workings of the brain to know that, for example, it's not a perpertual motion machine. Likewise, we don't need to know the precise hardware or software of the brain to know it obeys the physical Church Turing thesis, and can hence be simulated by a universal Turing machine.