The brain is not a computer

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.

My the article is misargued mush. It's hard to analyse all 4000 words of it but to pick on a few points:

>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.

I have several memories.

>cognitive psychologists will never find a copy of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the brain

We can build artificial neural networks at the moment to recognise faces and no doubt if you fed them the right inputs, to recognise Beethoven and probably tell you which symphony was playing. You would also not 'find a copy' of the 5th in the neural network. It is likely that the human network of neurons works in a similar manner to the artificial neural network with the learnings stored in modifications to synapses and changes in memory values respectively. I mention this rather obvious stuff because the author goes on to suggest:

>Meanwhile, vast sums of money are being raised for brain research, based in some cases on faulty ideas and promises that cannot be kept

On the basis of the above kind of semi arguments. The fact that the Human Brain Project may be a poor use of research funds is kind of a different issue.

>I challenged researchers there to account for intelligent human behaviour without reference to any aspect of the IP metaphor.

If you think of anything we normally regard as intelligence such as playing chess it involves taking in some information such as where the pieces are and then doing something with it. How that is supposed to prove his point is a loss to me.

etc and on for dozens of other wrong implications and twisted logic. Life's too short...

(For a kind of counter argument check out the Recurrent Neural Networks and Inceptionism articles https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9584325 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9736598 for how eeriely close the behaviour of artificial neural networks can be to human ones)

Bravo. You can understand that only if you offer an abstract definition of terms like 'computer', 'computation', 'calculation' etc. If you define 'computing' as something these clusters of regular matter we call 'computers' do, then if would exclude animals and other things. But, when you're thinking in abstract terms, then you come to the conclusion that a lot of things in nature are 'computing'.

The same thing could be said about 'intelligence'. Current definitions of intelligence are not abstract definitions(even though the word itself seems like some abstract term, similar to calculation, motion etc.), but rather are labels/descriptions of particular human traits. If a more abstract definition was offered, you would see a lot more things in nature 'becoming' intelligent. So, currently we are in a situation where 'intelligence' is defined in terms of human traits(like being able to speak human language, do human mathematics, drive cars etc), but then at the same time we're looking for intelligent aliens. You can't find 'intelligent' aliens if the term intelligence is defined in such a way to only ever apply to humans. It's really a parlor trick.

This is an expression of human desire to feel special - you don't want to be labeled as a computer or cluster of regular matter - rather you are an 'intelligent' soul(a different substance, not a regular matter) made in the image of the most powerful creature in the universe who happens to love you and care about you.

Are brains Turing complete?

Are all brains Turing complete?

I'm not convinced by your points. Savants are exceptionally uncommon, and there's no evidence most people can learn the skills they have. Many savants are famously bad at every day human skills, so clearly there's a trade-off - at best.

Storing and operating on numbers with arbitrary precision is a completely trivial operation for all but the oldest computers. But the abilities most humans find trivial - exploring an arbitrary environment by body movement (without falling over), throwing and catching things, playing sports, using tools creatively, reproducing and maintaining relationships, communicating using complex natural languages - are huge engineering problems in the digital space, and most aren't anywhere close to being solved definitively.

So let's ask again - how many of these problems can be solved using Turing complete digital systems?

I don't think anyone can honestly say "All of them." Given the state of the art, a more realistic answer is "We just don't know yet."

In fact several people in this thread have explicitly compared human visual memory to lossy compression of images in a computer system. That's his main point, about the metaphor leading people astray.