"Your Brain does not work like a PC" Topic

What a great article

link

With Respect
Konstantinos Travlos, PhD

Thank you for posting. It was very interesting but out of my general depth for science. Seriously, I have a headache now.

yes Bill, we sometimes use this board appropriately :p

I've been saying for years that if it weren't for the fact that people see computers as a "mysterious black box" the whole computers will become sentient when complex enough idea would never have evolved. If we'd stayed with Babbage's idea and they could see the gears turning this would not have happened.
Robert

Exceptional article, that happens to fit right in with my current WIP novel, so therefore bookmarked! Thank you, Konstantinos.

As an aside, regarding Toaster's comment about Babbage, I highly recommend The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua. (For a review, I offer my latest entry in our library blog. The review itself begins near the end, as the rest of the article features Teen Tech books.) link

That explains why my hard drive is rattling….

Humans seem to do this for everything. I guess it's the need to have something explained in "concrete"even if the explanation is wrong. It's the same thought that has some physicists insisting the universe follows the laws of Physics. The universe does give a rat's tail about Physics. Math is just a language that lets us discuss some things we observe that we other wise have difficulty doing.

The article of course doesn't speculate on how the brain works. When we understand that we'll probably have finally understand what "ALIVE" really is. And of course if we understand that, we'll probably be able to manipulate it. At which point we may have reached some kind of godhood.

No facts, just an opinion.

Thanks, KT, for posting that! Very thought provoking.

That article was worthless philosphical masturbation about how the brain doesn't work. I want the time I wasted back, KTravlos, it was in no way great.

Sergeant Paper, PhD

Well Sergeant Paper, you cannot have time back. Tis a pity that you wasted it. It was your choice :p

Konstantinos Travlos, PhD

How can a "secret" be "revealed" when it is speculation?

From a comment: "I for one would really like to know what the author's alternative to cognition, as we currently understand it, is."

He said it was just an "altered brain". The brain is changed by everything it is stimulated by. No memory is required: the altered brain creates a pattern for future use/exposure to the same thing, or something similar enough to draw upon the alternation in the brain. A completely new thing alters the brain accordingly; and future exposure then draws upon, or is going to function through, the alteration already in place.

Fine by me! I see the physical brain, the entire ball of wax baby that is a mortal being, as an "interface" with the immortal mind elsewhere. We get to stay "there" (here) as long as the whole ball of wax baby functions. Once the interface dies, the mind is cut off from the experience, and we "wake up". Wherever that is………..

I think the point of the article is spot on— that we'll never actually understand how the brain works if we keep trying to define its function in terms of any sort of mechanical device, whatever the source of the mechanism. I'm glad to read that actual researchers into the function of the brain are breaking away from the "digital model," as it were. I'm sorry for Hawking (and various science fiction writers), but there will never be a "Singularity" when human conscienceness is "downloadable" into any sort of device. Immortality will not come that way, if human effort can even produce it at all (which, logically, it cannot, as any such "immortality" will end with the heat death of the Universe, if not before that, and therefore will not be "immortality" at all).

In the end, I find this very refreshing— that to have a living brain, one must have a living being. Toasters need not apply. (Well, not *you*, Toaster, but I think you know what I mean ).

Faeries make your computer run, everyone knows that (or should),. Why do you think programmers and secretaries have bowls of candy near the computer?

How does the brain work? Demons, probably.

:-).

How does the brain work?

Based on my observation, I think "Not at all", "very badly" and "as well as playing your CD on a turntable at 33 1/3 rpm" apply to many as well.

Very heavy but the brain learns and makes pathways to do things the first time you try to copy a dollar bill yes you get that bad/poor result now if you copy the dollar bill a number of times you will get better. Now we come to the vast difference in humans To make a copy I would still be looking at the dollar bill after ten or 20 copies one of my sons would be doing an almost perfect copy after say 3 and not have to look at the original. Same son I can sit down with him for nearly an hour to teach him a basic maths rule that his teacher has tried to explain to him and we both fail. Original and unique our brains. So I agree not like a computer at all. People can not store facts or images at will and even if they make a great effort in certain fields they will not store an item well. I think therefore I am is as good as it gets so far.

My brain works exactly like a computer.
An old punch card computer, it's slow, not very efficient, bigger then it needs to be. Overly complex to use. And if the cards gets misplaced. I'll forget my own name.

You guys need to stop overanalyzing this and just get back into the matrix.

Dan