
The Computer and the Brain (1958) [pdf] - jstewartmobile
https://ia800800.us.archive.org/4/items/TheComputerAndTheBrain/The%20Computer%20and%20The%20Brain_text.pdf
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User23
Von Neumann was a frightfully bright guy. He's also why I don't trust the
predictive power of a model based on data fitting rather than an actual theory
about the underlying mechanism. "With four parameters I can fit an elephant,
and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."

I found this book a great read, but people who are emotionally invested in the
error that the Church-Turing thesis implies brains are Turing machines will
probably not like it.

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tabtab
Whether brains "are" TM's may be mostly moot from a
simulation/emulation/modelling standpoint. We may not need a perfect model to
get a "good enough" model. Biological systems are generally designed to handle
a degree of noise and damage and still function fairly well. Thus noise
introduced by the imperfections of a model may similarly not sufficiently
degrade its ability to act like a normal brain.

On a really small scale our models may lack certain properties of biological
brains, but it may not matter for most emulation. How much detail and/or
actual "mirroring" is necessary to get good-enough emulation is still an
unknown but key question.

And, I suspect we may find that fully mirroring biological systems is not the
most efficient way to design good AI similar to how flapping wings were not
the best way to get powered flight.

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0xcde4c3db
I like how Dijkstra put it:

"[...] whether Machines Can Think, a question of which we now know that it is
about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim." [1]

[1]
[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EW...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD898.html)

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amitprayal
Why is that not relevant , its pretty clear that Submarines cant swim since
they don't have a will of there own, they are only propelled to where the
people inside them, who can think ,want them to go.

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tabtab
Depends how one defines "swim". That'll probably turn into a meandering
philosophical debate, based on my experience debating "intent" with other IT
people.

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danielmorozoff
I highly recommend this book (talks) for anyone interested in a computation
approach to neuroscience. I found it remarkable how far seeing Von Neumann was
in relating computation to the understanding of the brain. Here is the
physical copy if anyone is interested.

[https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300181111/computer-
and-b...](https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300181111/computer-and-brain)

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Cieplak
Von Neumann died before he finished writing this book.

Another unfinished work of his that's worth checking out is _Theory of Self-
Reproducing Automata_ where he introduces his conception of self-replicating
automata [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_construc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor)

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swah
IIRC this book was difficult/boring so I haven't read it yet, but I remember
that I bought it because this article that mentioned it was quite exciting:

 _You do realize that John von Neumann spent the last 10 years of his life
singlehandedly developing a theory of computing based on cellular automata?
The computer you 're reading this blog rant on was his frigging prototype! He
was going to throw it out and make a better one! And then he died of cancer,
just like my brother Dave did, just like so many people with so much more to
give and so much more life to live. And we're not making headway on cancer,
either, because our computers and languages are such miserable crap._

Source: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/moores-law-is-
crap.h...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/moores-law-is-crap.html)

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mathiasben
thanks, will read this.

