5 ms·

> The brain has always been compared with a highly sophisticated computer. This is not strictly true. In ancient times, Plato compared the mind to a chariot pu

> The brain has always been compared with a highly sophisticated computer. This is not strictly true. In ancient times, Plato compared the mind to a chariot pulled by two horses, representing emotion and reason. This reflected the importance of horses for transportation at the time. In the 1600s, Descartes saw the mind as akin to a mechanical clockwork machine, reflective of the clockwork and automatons built then. In the late 1800s, Freud described the psyche in terms of hydraulics and steam engines - cutting-edge technology. Each era attempts to explain the complexities of the human mind through the lens of its most advanced creations. But all these analogies fall short.

amaricano 3y ago
that makes sense
Spk--17 3y ago
You are very right, but I still see a technological asymptote. What is said that the mind is like a computer is because it is based on logic, mathematics. The analogies may be to the latest current technology but they have one thing in common and it is the abstraction of a perfect machine or system, {We have little of perfect, but our mistakes make us unique and essential}
- edgyquant 3y ago
  I don’t think that holds though because logic is a high level function of the brain not something fundamental to its design.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    Depends on whether you think mathematical reasoning is uncovering fundamental tenets of reality. I think it is, and the history of experimental physics in particular supports this too.
glitchc 3y ago
Insightful. And the next era will describe it in terms of quantum interactions.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > Insightful. And the next era will describe it in terms of quantum interactions. Roger Penrose already talks about a theory of consciousness based on non-computable quantum effects in microtubules. http://www.consciousentities.com/penrose.htm http://www.consciousentities.com/penrose.htm
  - eru 3y ago
    Keep in mind that this is probably (a) bollocks, and (b) doesn't preclude brains being (quantum) computers. You can use a Turing machine to (inefficiently) simulate a quantum computer just fine. The page you linked to also seems to think that Gödel's incompleteness theorem says that human brains can do thinks that computers can't. That conclusion isn't warranted: Yes, there are specific statements that specific formal systems can neither prove nor disprove. And for every formal system you can find such systems. However, there are also plenty of statements that humans can neither prove nor disprove. Human also make plenty of mistakes. (You can also build a probabilistic formal system that's allowed to make mistakes.)
- red75prime 3y ago
  In terms of quantum computations. Most quantum interactions average into classical mechanics. And, no, it's not guaranteed. We are already beyond vague analogies like "two chariots". In the next era we probably will know equivalent (quantum) (noisy) computations for the brain activity.
mitthrowaway2 3y ago
The difference is, there's no Church-Turing thesis for chariots.
- omnicognate 3y ago
  True, but there was Ben-Hur's thesis that "a chariot is capable of carrying any person", which says as much about brains as the Church-Turing thesis does unless you beg the question.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    Do you mean that it's begging the question to assume that the brain comes to its conclusions via a physically deterministic procedure that terminates in finite time?
    - eru 3y ago
      > [...] to assume that the brain comes to its conclusions via a physically deterministic procedure [...] I don't think determinism makes any difference here? There are various flavours of non-deterministic Turing machines, and whether the brain is deterministic is more of a philosophical question than anything else. (I would say it's convenient and proper to model the brain as using a lot of random noise, eg even if just from thermal noise. And that kind of biological cellular level is the probably the 'right way' to think about the brain in most circumstances. One could try to argue that the noise comes from deterministic chaos. And then someone else could argue that the underlying quantum processes are already non-deterministic. And yet another person can argue that quantum mechanics is completely deterministic, if you go by the many worlds interpretation and not the silly Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Etc)
    - omnicognate 3y ago
      That's not what the Church-Turing thesis is about. The Church-Turing thesis says that any "effective procedure" (i.e. algorithm) for performing computations on natural numbers is equivalent to a Turing machine. It is generally accepted but cannot be proven because "effective procedure" is not defined. Indeed it can be seen as providing a definition for the term "effective procedure". To extend that to say anything about the physical world (i.e. some form of "Physical Church-Turing Thesis") is to make quite a different assertion and one that is not so "generally accepted". To make it say anything about brains you have to assert some form of equivalence between brains and "effective procedures" on the natural numbers, which is indeed to beg the question in this instance. There's a different idea you may be confusing it with, which is the idea that since the known laws of physics (aside from state vector reduction in quantum mechanics) are in the form of differential equations that can be numerically integrated to arbitrary precision anything can be "simulated". However, this is not part of the Church-Turing thesis. (And personally I find the phrase "to arbitrary precision" here, and the exception for state vector reduction, quite a barrier to basing any assertions about the nature of the universe or minds on it.)
mdp2021 3y ago
> This reflected the importance of horses Very marginally, in front of the basic direct image of "dominating the animal", consistently with the charioteer being the subtle part in the "chariot system".
iancmceachern 3y ago
Yeah, "always" is always problematic when making gross comments about the world
strogonoff 3y ago
Iain McGilchrist puts the matter of our lopsided repertoire of metaphors for the brain well in The Master and His Emissary (apologies for the lengthy quote): > This leads to a fundamental point about any attempt to understand the brain. It is a particularly acute case of the problems encountered in understanding anything. The nature of the attention one brings to bear on anything alters what one finds; what we aim to understand changes its nature with the context in which it lies; and we can only ever understand anything as a something. > There is no way round these problems—if they are problems. To attempt to detach oneself entirely is just to bring a special kind of attention to bear which will have important consequences for what we find. Similarly we cannot see something without there being a context, even if the context appears to be that of ‘no context’, a thing ripped free of its moorings in the lived world. That is just a special, highly value-laden kind of context in itself, and it certainly alters what we find, too. Nor can we say that we do not see things as anything at all—that we just see them, full stop. There is always a model by which we are understanding, an exemplar with which we are comparing, what we see, and where it is not identified it usually means that we have tacitly adopted the model of the machine. > <…> > Such considerations apply to the attempt to understand anything at all. But when we come to look at what we refer to as brain functions, there is a problem of a wholly different order. We are not ‘just’ looking at things in the world—a lump of rock, or even a person—but the processes whereby the world itself, together with the rock or the person, might be brought into being for us at all, the very foundations of the fact of our experience, including any idea we might have about the nature of the world, and the nature of the brain, and even the idea that this is so. If it is true that attention changes the nature of what we find, how do we decide the most appropriate attention for that? One that tries to ignore the inwardness of experience? What possible context is there in which to place the foundations of experience of all contexts whatever? And what kind of a thing are we to see it ‘as’? The answer is far from obvious, but in the absence of an attempt to address the question we do not give no answer. We answer with the model we understand—the only kind of thing we can ever fully understand, for the simple reason that we made it: the machine.
- high_5 3y ago
  Interesting quotes, considering that our latest and greatest achievemnets in the AI field are based on "attention is all you need" transformers. Yet it seems that in a way we're so close, yet so far from replicating the full human attention in a machine. Maybe precisely because it can't be transformed into a a purely objective/measurable/scientific category.
Aardwolf 3y ago
The clockwork actually is the best kind of computer they had in the 1600s (in a clock it's dividing time units, they had mechanical calculators, and see also the antikyra mechanism), so that's a similar comparison If in the future the comparison will be "quantum", then again, a quantum computer is also a kind of computer
0xEF 3y ago
I think the modern comparison to an advanced computer is far, far more accurate, though. If we look at each of the metaphors used to describe the mind in tje past, they got more sophosticated as time went on, so it stands to reason that the computer is our best comparison, to date. In a sophomoric way, it makes me wonder if that's what this is all about; our advancement as a species is a culmination of us trying to build something that works as our minds do, something that can perhaps reflect our minds since we really don't know of anything else that has achieved our (percieved?) level of consciousness.
elric 3y ago
This is going to sound really obvious, but you can only make analogies with things you know. Or better yet, something known and understood by the people around you. I'm sure there are some subtleties in chariots being pulled by two horses that I'm not aware of, and so Plato's analogy doesn't work for me. We won't be able to compare the brain to anything better than a computer until we either understand the brain better, or until we understand some other brain-analog better.
Archelaos 3y ago
> > The brain has always been compared with a highly sophisticated computer. > This is not strictly true. It is just a small stylistic lapse. The author used "always" in the sense of "frome time to time since we have digital computers". To suggest that he would think that people before the invention of the computer could have compared the brain to a computer seems quite absurd to me. And trivial that they did not.

amaricano 3y ago

that makes sense

Spk--17 3y ago

You are very right, but I still see a technological asymptote. What is said that the mind is like a computer is because it is based on logic, mathematics. The analogies may be to the latest current technology but they have one thing in common and it is the abstraction of a perfect machine or system, {We have little of perfect, but our mistakes make us unique and essential}

edgyquant 3y ago
I don’t think that holds though because logic is a high level function of the brain not something fundamental to its design.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Depends on whether you think mathematical reasoning is uncovering fundamental tenets of reality. I think it is, and the history of experimental physics in particular supports this too.

glitchc 3y ago

Insightful. And the next era will describe it in terms of quantum interactions.

andsoitis 3y ago
> Insightful. And the next era will describe it in terms of quantum interactions. Roger Penrose already talks about a theory of consciousness based on non-computable quantum effects in microtubules. http://www.consciousentities.com/penrose.htm http://www.consciousentities.com/penrose.htm
- eru 3y ago
  Keep in mind that this is probably (a) bollocks, and (b) doesn't preclude brains being (quantum) computers. You can use a Turing machine to (inefficiently) simulate a quantum computer just fine. The page you linked to also seems to think that Gödel's incompleteness theorem says that human brains can do thinks that computers can't. That conclusion isn't warranted: Yes, there are specific statements that specific formal systems can neither prove nor disprove. And for every formal system you can find such systems. However, there are also plenty of statements that humans can neither prove nor disprove. Human also make plenty of mistakes. (You can also build a probabilistic formal system that's allowed to make mistakes.)
red75prime 3y ago
In terms of quantum computations. Most quantum interactions average into classical mechanics. And, no, it's not guaranteed. We are already beyond vague analogies like "two chariots". In the next era we probably will know equivalent (quantum) (noisy) computations for the brain activity.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago

The difference is, there's no Church-Turing thesis for chariots.

omnicognate 3y ago
True, but there was Ben-Hur's thesis that "a chariot is capable of carrying any person", which says as much about brains as the Church-Turing thesis does unless you beg the question.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  Do you mean that it's begging the question to assume that the brain comes to its conclusions via a physically deterministic procedure that terminates in finite time?
  - eru 3y ago
    > [...] to assume that the brain comes to its conclusions via a physically deterministic procedure [...] I don't think determinism makes any difference here? There are various flavours of non-deterministic Turing machines, and whether the brain is deterministic is more of a philosophical question than anything else. (I would say it's convenient and proper to model the brain as using a lot of random noise, eg even if just from thermal noise. And that kind of biological cellular level is the probably the 'right way' to think about the brain in most circumstances. One could try to argue that the noise comes from deterministic chaos. And then someone else could argue that the underlying quantum processes are already non-deterministic. And yet another person can argue that quantum mechanics is completely deterministic, if you go by the many worlds interpretation and not the silly Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Etc)
  - omnicognate 3y ago
    That's not what the Church-Turing thesis is about. The Church-Turing thesis says that any "effective procedure" (i.e. algorithm) for performing computations on natural numbers is equivalent to a Turing machine. It is generally accepted but cannot be proven because "effective procedure" is not defined. Indeed it can be seen as providing a definition for the term "effective procedure". To extend that to say anything about the physical world (i.e. some form of "Physical Church-Turing Thesis") is to make quite a different assertion and one that is not so "generally accepted". To make it say anything about brains you have to assert some form of equivalence between brains and "effective procedures" on the natural numbers, which is indeed to beg the question in this instance. There's a different idea you may be confusing it with, which is the idea that since the known laws of physics (aside from state vector reduction in quantum mechanics) are in the form of differential equations that can be numerically integrated to arbitrary precision anything can be "simulated". However, this is not part of the Church-Turing thesis. (And personally I find the phrase "to arbitrary precision" here, and the exception for state vector reduction, quite a barrier to basing any assertions about the nature of the universe or minds on it.)

mdp2021 3y ago

> This reflected the importance of horses Very marginally, in front of the basic direct image of "dominating the animal", consistently with the charioteer being the subtle part in the "chariot system".

iancmceachern 3y ago

Yeah, "always" is always problematic when making gross comments about the world

strogonoff 3y ago

Iain McGilchrist puts the matter of our lopsided repertoire of metaphors for the brain well in The Master and His Emissary (apologies for the lengthy quote): > This leads to a fundamental point about any attempt to understand the brain. It is a particularly acute case of the problems encountered in understanding anything. The nature of the attention one brings to bear on anything alters what one finds; what we aim to understand changes its nature with the context in which it lies; and we can only ever understand anything as a something. > There is no way round these problems—if they are problems. To attempt to detach oneself entirely is just to bring a special kind of attention to bear which will have important consequences for what we find. Similarly we cannot see something without there being a context, even if the context appears to be that of ‘no context’, a thing ripped free of its moorings in the lived world. That is just a special, highly value-laden kind of context in itself, and it certainly alters what we find, too. Nor can we say that we do not see things as anything at all—that we just see them, full stop. There is always a model by which we are understanding, an exemplar with which we are comparing, what we see, and where it is not identified it usually means that we have tacitly adopted the model of the machine. > <…> > Such considerations apply to the attempt to understand anything at all. But when we come to look at what we refer to as brain functions, there is a problem of a wholly different order. We are not ‘just’ looking at things in the world—a lump of rock, or even a person—but the processes whereby the world itself, together with the rock or the person, might be brought into being for us at all, the very foundations of the fact of our experience, including any idea we might have about the nature of the world, and the nature of the brain, and even the idea that this is so. If it is true that attention changes the nature of what we find, how do we decide the most appropriate attention for that? One that tries to ignore the inwardness of experience? What possible context is there in which to place the foundations of experience of all contexts whatever? And what kind of a thing are we to see it ‘as’? The answer is far from obvious, but in the absence of an attempt to address the question we do not give no answer. We answer with the model we understand—the only kind of thing we can ever fully understand, for the simple reason that we made it: the machine.

high_5 3y ago
Interesting quotes, considering that our latest and greatest achievemnets in the AI field are based on "attention is all you need" transformers. Yet it seems that in a way we're so close, yet so far from replicating the full human attention in a machine. Maybe precisely because it can't be transformed into a a purely objective/measurable/scientific category.

Aardwolf 3y ago

The clockwork actually is the best kind of computer they had in the 1600s (in a clock it's dividing time units, they had mechanical calculators, and see also the antikyra mechanism), so that's a similar comparison If in the future the comparison will be "quantum", then again, a quantum computer is also a kind of computer

0xEF 3y ago

I think the modern comparison to an advanced computer is far, far more accurate, though. If we look at each of the metaphors used to describe the mind in tje past, they got more sophosticated as time went on, so it stands to reason that the computer is our best comparison, to date. In a sophomoric way, it makes me wonder if that's what this is all about; our advancement as a species is a culmination of us trying to build something that works as our minds do, something that can perhaps reflect our minds since we really don't know of anything else that has achieved our (percieved?) level of consciousness.

elric 3y ago

This is going to sound really obvious, but you can only make analogies with things you know. Or better yet, something known and understood by the people around you. I'm sure there are some subtleties in chariots being pulled by two horses that I'm not aware of, and so Plato's analogy doesn't work for me. We won't be able to compare the brain to anything better than a computer until we either understand the brain better, or until we understand some other brain-analog better.

Archelaos 3y ago

> > The brain has always been compared with a highly sophisticated computer. > This is not strictly true. It is just a small stylistic lapse. The author used "always" in the sense of "frome time to time since we have digital computers". To suggest that he would think that people before the invention of the computer could have compared the brain to a computer seems quite absurd to me. And trivial that they did not.