Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!timbuk!cs.umn.edu!thornley
From: thornley@cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The Bandwidth of the Brain
Message-ID: <1990Dec25.144305.8590@cs.umn.edu>
Date: 25 Dec 90 14:43:05 GMT
References: <1990Dec18.181935.23319@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <37111@cup.portal.com> <37134@cup.portal.com> <10340@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis - CSCI Dept.
Lines: 28

In article <10340@darkstar.ucsc.edu> foetus@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (71030000) writes:
>
>
>The brain is not a computer.  It is, however, the most complex and
>little understood thing that so many (but not all :-)) people have in 
>common.  In this respect, it is like a computer.
>But:
>Back in the days when a telephone switchboard (or even Thaddius Cahills 
>fabled Tellharmonium) was the most complicated, technologically
>advanced task machine, people compared that to a brain.
>Fact is, we've all just been fooling ourselves.
>Anyboby get what I'm saying?
>
Yeah, but a computer can simulate a switchboard, given the right inputs
and outputs, but a switchboard can't simulate a computer.  (I could be
wrong - anyone ever come up with a Turing machine simulator for a
switchboard?)

The point is that a computer is a general device in the way that a
switchboard isn't.  Therefore, if it is possible to model a brain with
digital computation it is possible, if not optimum, to use a sufficiently
powerful computer of modern design.  If it is possible to model a brain 
with analog computation, we can simulate that with precise enough digital.
Basically, if there is nothing mystical about a system, and we understand
a system well enough, we can simulate it on a computer, but probably not
on a switchboard.

DHT