
Your brain does not process information and it is not a computer - Osiris30
https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
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Isamu
>Computers, quite literally, process information – numbers, letters, words,
formulas, images. The information first has to be encoded into a format
computers can use, which means patterns of ones and zeroes (‘bits’) organised
into small chunks (‘bytes’).

Sorry, now you are looking at a computer at the logical level, not the
physical, what is it REALLY doing. If you are going to claim there is no place
in the brain where a word or a piece of music is stored (presumably because
there is no literal, printed word representation in your brain?) then you
can't quite make the same claim of a computer.

We consider the components of a computer to be logically digital, but under
the covers all transistors are analog, and all the workings of the computer
are analog. We just throw away voltage transitions and we lump some range of
voltages as "on" logically and some other range of voltages as "off"
logically. It takes time for the circuits to reach their final state.

I assume the same is true of the brain. At some level, there are no symbols or
numbers or memories to be found. There's just neurons firing or not, in
context with other neurons. Same with computers, there's just little
amplifiers supporting some voltage in some context with other amplifiers.
That's it.

Or not, depending on what level you want to look it.

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avmich
> Senses, reflexes and learning mechanisms – this is what we start with, and
> it is quite a lot, when you think about it. If we lacked any of these
> capabilities at birth, we would probably have trouble surviving.

> But here is what we are not born with: information, data, rules, software,
> knowledge, lexicons, representations, algorithms, programs, models,
> memories, images, processors, subroutines, encoders, decoders, symbols, or
> buffers – design elements that allow digital computers to behave somewhat
> intelligently. Not only are we not born with such things, we also don’t
> develop them – ever.

Looks like a terminological difference?

~~~
Recurecur
> Looks like a terminological difference?

Yes. Another very clear example is where he states:

>> That is all well and good if we functioned as computers do, but McBeath and
his colleagues gave a simpler account: to catch the ball, the player simply
needs to keep moving in a way that keeps the ball in a constant visual
relationship with respect to home plate and the surrounding scenery
(technically, in a ‘linear optical trajectory’). This might sound complicated,
but it is actually incredibly simple, and completely free of computations,
representations and algorithms.

It boggles my mind that the author doesn't realize that "keeping the ball in a
linear optical trajectory" is in fact, canonically, an algorithm.

As a matter of fact, it's pretty much exactly the algorithm that computers on
(earlier model) antiaircraft missiles use to collide with their targets.

The author exhibits similarly muddled thoughts about "memories". The dollar
bill drawing exercise shows nothing except that our brains (rather obviously)
employ lossy techniques when storing information. By default, our brains don't
remember "irrelevant" details like all the scrollwork on the bill. We remember
"1", George Washington, and perhaps a couple other details.

However, our brains must be able to correctly retrieve information at times,
or I would have been unable to type this message...

------
theamk
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11729499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11729499)

A comment I very much agree with:

> radarsat1 on May 19, 2016 [-]

> It's not even pedantic, it's just wrong. He's ignoring years of
> neuroscience.

> We know that the brain uses signals, and that these signals are composed of
> codes. We know that to interpret the world, certain information processing
> must take place. We are learning more about the exact nature of this
> processing, more about how neurons and even other fundamentals of the body
> code information and contribute to processing (e.g. chemical processes), but
> they definitely process information. We even know some of the codes.

> On the other hand, if the author wants to argue about the nature of what is
> information, what is processing.. he's going to have a steep hill to climb.

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justfor1comment
I think the author has confused himself into thinking that just like a
computer has discrete physical components called RAM, CPU and Hard Disk, the
human brain at some physical level has similar components. However when
neuroscientists are talking about these terms they are talking in logical
terms and not physical terms. The 'chemical changes' and 'rewiring of brain'
that the author thinks are the reality of how the brain works are still
compatible with the logical way in which computers work. The memory and
computation and storage are distributed across large collection of neurons in
the brain yet they logically conform to computer design principles.

~~~
infradig
"The memory and computation and storage are distributed across large
collection of neurons in the brain yet they logically conform to computer
design principles."

That is an opinion not a statement of fact.

------
ThJ
The author seems to have missed out on the fact that information theory is a
part of physics now. Not only are human brains computers. The entire universe
is a computer. The author seems to think that a computer must use bus lines,
clock signals and silicon in order to be a computer. In actual fact, a
computer doesn't even need to have software. You can make a computer with just
analog components, without any digital chips in sight.

~~~
Recurecur
Another way of saying it is: "Apparently the author forgot about _analog_
computers."

