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From: thornley@cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The Bandwidth of the Brain
Message-ID: <1990Dec25.170402.12953@cs.umn.edu>
Date: 25 Dec 90 17:04:02 GMT
References: <1990Dec18.181935.23319@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <37111@cup.portal.com> <37134@cup.portal.com> <10340@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <1990Dec25.144305.8590@cs.umn.edu>
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis - CSCI Dept.
Lines: 18

In article <1990Dec25.144305.8590@cs.umn.edu> thornley@cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley) writes:
>In article <10340@darkstar.ucsc.edu> foetus@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (71030000) writes:
>>[The statement "The brain is a computer" is false, and similar to the
>> old statement "The brain is a switchboard".]
>[A computer is much more general than a switchboard, and can simulate
> almost anything we can understand.]

On rereading my earlier reply, I find that I have missed the point.

The brain is not like anything that anybody has tried to sell as a
computer.  Insofar as it is digital, it is formally equivalent to
a Turing machine.  However, it ain't anything like a von Neumann
machine (a point rubbed in in a computer vision class I just took -
all I needed for quick, accurate edge detection was something more
parallel than a Connection Machine).  It probably resembles a computer
in function more than anything else we make, though.

DHT