Brain complexity: not at all a computer (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 18, 2016, 15:11 (3111 days ago) @ David Turell

Finally an article that captures my point of view. As a biologic 'computer' the brain is not at all like the computers we use. And we can never mimic it:-https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8347861ad6-Daily_Newsletter_18_May_20165_18_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-8347861ad6-68942561-"No matter how hard they try, brain scientists and cognitive psychologists will never find a copy of Beethoven's 5th Symphony in the brain - or copies of words, pictures, grammatical rules or any other kinds of environmental stimuli. The human brain isn't really empty, of course. But it does not contain most of the things people think it does - not even simple things such as ‘memories'.-"Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused. For more than half a century now, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and other experts on human behaviour have been asserting that the human brain works like a computer.-***-"A healthy newborn is also equipped with more than a dozen reflexes - ready-made reactions to certain stimuli that are important for its survival. It turns its head in the direction of something that brushes its cheek and then sucks whatever enters its mouth. It holds its breath when submerged in water. It grasps things placed in its hands so strongly it can nearly support its own weight. Perhaps most important, newborns come equipped with powerful learning mechanisms that allow them to change rapidly so they can interact increasingly effectively with their world, even if that world is unlike the one their distant ancestors faced.-***-"Forgive me for this introduction to computing, but I need to be clear: computers really do operate on symbolic representations of the world. They really store and retrieve. They really process. They really have physical memories. They really are guided in everything they do, without exception, by algorithms.-"Humans, on the other hand, do not - never did, never will. Given this reality, why do so many scientists talk about our mental life as if we were computers?-***-"When strong emotions are involved, millions of neurons can become more active. In a 2016 study of survivors of a plane crash by the University of Toronto neuropsychologist Brian Levine and others, recalling the crash increased neural activity in ‘the amygdala, medial temporal lobe, anterior and posterior midline, and visual cortex' of the passengers.-"The idea, advanced by several scientists, that specific memories are somehow stored in individual neurons is preposterous; if anything, that assertion just pushes the problem of memory to an even more challenging level: how and where, after all, is the memory stored in the cell?-***-"But the IP metaphor is, after all, just another metaphor - a story we tell to make sense of something we don't actually understand. And like all the metaphors that preceded it, it will certainly be cast aside at some point - either replaced by another metaphor or, in the end, replaced by actual knowledge.-***-"The faulty logic of the IP metaphor is easy enough to state. It is based on a faulty syllogism - one with two reasonable premises and a faulty conclusion. Reasonable premise #1: all computers are capable of behaving intelligently. Reasonable premise #2: all computers are information processors. Faulty conclusion: all entities that are capable of behaving intelligently are information processors.-"To understand even the basics of how the brain maintains the human intellect, we might need to know not just the current state of all 86 billion neurons and their 100 trillion interconnections, not just the varying strengths with which they are connected, and not just the states of more than 1,000 proteins that exist at each connection point, but how the moment-to-moment activity of the brain contributes to the integrity of the system. Add to this the uniqueness of each brain, brought about in part because of the uniqueness of each person's life history, -***-"We are organisms, not computers. Get over it. Let's get on with the business of trying to understand ourselves, but without being encumbered by unnecessary intellectual baggage. The IP metaphor has had a half-century run, producing few, if any, insights along the way. The time has come to hit the DELETE key."-Comment: The baby brain starts with a blank slate and reflexes and builds from there. Romansh needs to read this. With a solipsistic approach the article should be read completely.