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The computational power of the human brain

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Re: The computational power of the human brain

#41

Post by Archelaos »

chrisdbanks wrote: post #3

> The brain has always been compared with a highly sophisticated computer. This is not strictly true. In ancient times, Plato compared the mind to a chariot pulled by two horses, representing emotion and reason. This reflected the importance of horses for transportation at the time. In the 1600s, Descartes saw the mind as akin to a mechanical clockwork machine, reflective of the clockwork and automatons built then. I…

> > The brain has always been compared with a highly sophisticated computer.

> This is not strictly true.

It is just a small stylistic lapse. The author used "always" in the sense of "frome time to time since we have digital computers". To suggest that he would think that people before the invention of the computer could have compared the brain to a computer seems quite absurd to me. And trivial that they did not.

Re: The computational power of the human brain

#42

Post by codeulike »

thworp wrote: post #40
codeulike wrote: post #30

Separately but related: decades ago, research was done into the "Bandwidth of Consciousness", that is: how much information can we consciously process. That research came up with the startling low number of about 40 bits per second _at_most_. Suggesting that the huge amount of information our senses take in is massively compressed before we become 'conscious' of it. References: W R Garner and Harold W Lake "The Amoun…

I think using terms and concepts from classical Information Science when talking about brains is a non-starter. To speak HN lingo, it's like measuring a computer's performance while it is in the middle of compiling the Linux kernel and training a GPT model. Sure, the throughput for these discrete tasks was low, but the brain is not discrete. It is a heavily optimized complex system that can be taught to predict compl…

"consciousness" is just a tiny goal-setting and evaluation layer on top of a a gigantic stack of "unconscious" processes

that was the point of what I wrote, for more details please re-read

Re: The computational power of the human brain

#43

Post by amts »

strogonoff wrote: post #25
chrisdbanks wrote: post #3

> The brain has always been compared with a highly sophisticated computer. This is not strictly true. In ancient times, Plato compared the mind to a chariot pulled by two horses, representing emotion and reason. This reflected the importance of horses for transportation at the time. In the 1600s, Descartes saw the mind as akin to a mechanical clockwork machine, reflective of the clockwork and automatons built then. I…

Iain McGilchrist puts the matter of our lopsided repertoire of metaphors for the brain well in The Master and His Emissary (apologies for the lengthy quote): > This leads to a fundamental point about any attempt to understand the brain. It is a particularly acute case of the problems encountered in understanding anything. The nature of the attention one brings to bear on anything alters what one finds; what we aim to…

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Re: The computational power of the human brain

#44

Post by strogonoff »

amts wrote: post #43
strogonoff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iain McGilchrist puts the matter of our lopsided repertoire of metaphors for the brain well in The Master and His Emissary (apologies for the lengthy quote): > This leads to a fundamental point about any attempt to understand the brain. It is a particularly acute case of the problems encountered in understanding anything. The nature of the attention one brings to bear on anything alters what one finds; what we aim to…

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