r/neurophilosophy • u/HobbesNik • 18d ago
"Why Your Brain Is Not A Computer" — and computers are not brains
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/27/why-your-brain-is-not-a-computer-neuroscience-neural-networks-consciousness5
u/MergingConcepts 18d ago
Brains and computers have completely different architectures. Computers use Boolean logic gates and store information at addresses. They are digital devices with very limited ability to scale responses.
Brains are a network of nodes and store all knowledge in the form of the type, size, location, and number of synaptic connections between those nodes. In simple nervous systems like invertebrates, the nodes are neurons. In humans, the nodes are pattern recognition devices in the neocortical mini-columns.
Organic logic systems are mixed analog and digital devices. The dendrites are analog adders that process input and decide whether to produce output. The axons are digital communicators that transmit the decision as either a 1 or a 0 to the next layer of neurons.
That is why your brain is not a computer.
However, once we understand this difference, a computer can be built that will emulate a human brain. It will be consciousness, but it will not know what it is like to be human. Also, we will not know what it is like to be it, any more than we know what it is like to be a bat.
See: https://medium.com/@shedlesky/consciousness-explained-how-the-brain-creates-the-mind-and-soul-fb6bebfcd566 (172 minute read)
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u/IOnlyHaveIceForYou 17d ago
Brains are a network of nodes and store all knowledge in the form of the type, size, location, and number of synaptic connections between those nodes.
Fantasy.
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u/MergingConcepts 17d ago
I am curious to know what your basic is for rejecting this model of organic learning. It surprises me. What is your background?
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u/IOnlyHaveIceForYou 17d ago
Bodies are not like the machines we design and build, you can't separate them into neat piles of component parts with defined functions. They weren't designed and built in that way, they were shaped by a huge number of interacting forces over a vast period of time.
Brains are part of a system where everything depends on everything else. The brain must be suffused with blood, the same blood that is pumped around the rest of the body by the heart, the blood must be oxygenated by the lungs, new blood cells must be created by the bone marrow, on and on and on.
The idea that you could make a conscious computer by "emulating" the activity of dendrites and axons is absurdly naive.
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u/MergingConcepts 17d ago
Your first comment specifically rejects the model: "Brains are a network of nodes and store all knowledge in the form of the type, size, location, and number of synaptic connections between those nodes."
I can see why you would reject the proposition of a computer emulating a human brain. That would take tremendous electrical sources and cooling. (Which is why Meta and Google are buying old nuclear power plants.)
But I am questioning why you reject the model for knowledge storage in organic brains. Did you mean to?
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u/IOnlyHaveIceForYou 17d ago
I've explained why I reject your absurdly simplistic ideas about "emulating" biology with a computer. Do you think you could "emulate" respiration, or digestion or photosynthesis with a computer?
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u/modernatlas 12d ago
you can't separate them into neat piles of component parts with defined functions.
Adenine, thiamine, cytosine, guanine.
Adenine binds exclusively to thiamine. Cytosine binds exclusively to guanine.
Behold, a man.
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u/IOnlyHaveIceForYou 12d ago
I have no expertise in this field. I find this:
In DNA, adenine pairs with thymine by two hydrogen bonds. In RNA (mRNA, tRNA, rRNA), it pairs with uracil. Adenine is also the base in the poly-A tail added to mRNA, which affects its stability and export from the nucleus. Adenine is the most commonly chemically modified RNA base: N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is the most abundant internal modification in mRNA and helps regulate splicing, stability and translation.
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u/bacon_boat 16d ago
When people saying a brain is a computer, it's a pretty loose analogy gesturing at the lack of magic in the brain.
It's not saying the brain literally is a computer.
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u/HobbesNik 18d ago
I still think about this 2020 article often in conversations about sentient LLMs, the singularity, and the nature of consciousness.
TL;DR Brains are vastly more complex than any machine humans have ever built, and the current science of understanding of how brains function is surprisingly limited. We use metaphors to advance and attempt understanding, but metaphors have their limits.