I don't think that was his point. I think he just vaguely meant digital computers could never compute the same functions as analogue computers, particularly wha

I don't think that was his point. I think he just vaguely meant digital computers could never compute the same functions as analogue computers, particularly whatever the "alive function" is. To answer your point simply, machines don't have the same energy constraints as small animals. A bird brain gets more compute per watt than my desktop pc, but humanity can (and does. often) hook up a power plant to a building sized computer. If you believe the function a brain is computing is computeable on von neuman, efficiency isnt relevant, in so far as you build a big enough machine, and get it running the right program.