Your brain does not process information and it is not a computer | Aeon Essays (aeon.co)

submitted 5 months ago by plinky@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

167 comments fedilink hide all child comments

the-podcast guy recently linked this essay, its old, but i don't think its significantly wrong (despite gpt evangelists) also read weizenbaum, libs, for the other side of the coin

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Tomorrow_Farewell@hexbear.net 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

of course I can’t prove that brain is not a turing machine, I would be world famous if I could

Okay, so, what is your basis for thinking that, for example, if a brain was given some set of rules such as 'if you are given the symbol "A", think of number 1 and go to the next symbol' and 'if you are given the symbol "B" and are thinking of number 1, think of number 2 and go back by two symbols' and some sequence of symbols, that that brain wouldn't be capable of working with those rules?

Computers are turing machines yes?

As in, they are modelled by Turing machines sufficiently well in some sense? Sure.

They cannot do non-Turing machines operations (decisions or whatever that’s called)

What? What are 'non-Turing machines operations'? The term 'Turing machine' refers to generalisations of finite automata. In this context, what they are doing is receiving input and reacting to it depending on their current state. I can provide some examples of finite automata implementations in Python code, if you want me to.
The word 'decision' doesn't carry any meaning in this context.

What comparing computer with brain gives to science, I’m asking again for third time in this thread

I don't recall you asking this question before, and I do not have an answer. I also don't see the question as relevant to the exchange so far.

That information goes from the eyes as bits like a camera? That’s already significantly wrong

A bit is a unit of information. If we treat the signal that the eyes send to the brain as carrying any sort of information, you can't argue that the brain doesn't (EDIT: I initially forgot to include the word 'doesn't) receive the information in bits. If you claim otherwise, you don't understand what information is and/or what bits are.

That you recall like a photograph read out from your computer? Also very likely wrong

Nobody is claiming, however, that your brain pulls up an analogue of a .bmp when you recall an image. You likely remember some details of an image, and 'subconsciously' reconstruct the 'gaps'. Computers can handle such tasks just fine, as well.