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From: long@oliveb.UUCP (Dave Long)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: the mamelian brain a kludge?
Message-ID: <525@oliveb.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 27-Jul-85 01:14:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: oliveb.525
Posted: Sat Jul 27 01:14:29 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Jul-85 06:20:33 EDT
References: <362@imsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: long@oliveb.UUCP (Dave Long)
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 42
Summary: 

In article <362@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes:
|    Look for a book by Eli Hellerman, one of the founders of computer science,
|concerning the workings of the human mind.  This book is either out now or will
|be out soon.  It will use the terms holography and resonance a great deal.  I
|am no expert on these things, but I understand some of it.  Consider the way
|a computer seeks to find one out of a million unsorted data items versus the
|manner in which the human brain performs the same task.  The brain draws a 
|resonant response from the data itself, likely using more than one key.  The computer must examine each item, one by one.  It's as if you were looking at a
|million dog houses, one of which contained YOUR dog, but which one?  The com-
|puter would search each doghouse.  The intelligent approach would be to whistle,
|knowing that YOUR dog would hear and come running from whichever house he
|was in, i.e. draw a response from the data itself.  That is what the brain does.
|Which is the kludge?

	FALSE ANALOGY!

    Faced with objects that were capable of resonant response, the computer 
probably would exploit that capability, and whistle also.  If you were faced
with a million bookshelves, with one containing YOUR burnt copy of Eli Heller-
man's book, what would you do?  Just like the contents of a computer memory,
that book is *not* going to come if you call it.  You would have to search
through all the bookshelves as well.
    (BTW:  Having never associated much with dogs, I probably wouldn't have
	thought of calling the dog for a long time)

**** REFER TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE ****

    I'd like anyone to try and show how "hardware" and "software" states exist
in the human mind.  While states of operation of the brain seem not to be ho-
mogenous, they certainly seem very non-discrete.
    Also, would somebody please explain how humans get this "software"?  Which,
BTW, does not seem to be too efficient;  I'd love to have a full scientific
calculator stashed away somewhere in core that I could interrupt-trap to.  In-
stead, I have to either use a calculator, or do some slow symbol-shunting.
(If God created man, why didn't he burn the bible, etc. into rom?)

						If anyone is interested,
						I may try to do a better
						covering of the subject,
						    Dave Long
-- 
{hplabs,fortune,idi,ihnp4,tolerant,allegra,tymix}!oliveb!long