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If you consider that our brain is a computer, then your argument isn't valid.


Our brain isn't a computer. That's the most recent metaphor we've used to try and make sense of the three pound organ in our heads.


Our brain is a computer. That fact may or may not offer useful insights on the properties of brains that we care about.

Likewise, our brains are engines, converting energy from one form to another, and hence governed by thermodynamics. Again, that fact may or may not be useful for investigating properties of the brain we care about.

Our brains are also matter, meat, networks, made of atoms, and squishy. These are all facts, they may or may not be useful.


Or our brain is a telegraph, the world wide web, an orchestra, a theater, a tv, millions of mindless bots, etc.

We use metaphors to help understand things we lack a literal explanation for, or the full explanation is complex and ongoing (neuroscience, biology, chemistry).


Profound and inspiring! Thanks for your input.


Computers were literally the name of people who number crunched for a living. Human brains are by definition the original computer


Counter Argument: Please answer the question: 1+1=? Congratulations, you are a computer.

(And that's probably a very difficult question, considering you had to acquire the concept of symbolism, numbers and relationships)


We are pattern recognizing feedback loops with memory. How is that not like a computer?


Like is the operative word.

Also: https://imgur.com/a/Bg9WH


Sure just as you are like me but different or i am like a monkey but different. We are all simulating a reality.


I agree that computation is the best metaphor we have to date, for everything.


We're special!


Please expand


See Marr's 3-levels hypothesis. If we "run" an algorithm able to find a program to compute arbitrary data, there must to exist that general algorithm. We (just) need to copy it and implement in silicon..




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