> neither hardware nor software created by humans is given to constant self-modification. Of course it is. A VM running on a CPU is basically just constantly s

> neither hardware nor software created by humans is given to constant self-modification. Of course it is. A VM running on a CPU is basically just constantly self modifying data with the help of modular hardware. I'd hypothesize, the brain has inert structures at it's core, too (which is why we are all alike), and the rest is the data of a state machine (an IC being part of the rest, from a phenomenological point of view). Of course the complexity might be beyond a state machine or linear bounded automata, i.e. deterministic (think quantum).