I am thinking myself into circles right now. But heres another cool idea. humans as computers. Basically humans are a function in the comp sci sense of the word. They are passed data (sensory experience, previous knowledge), perform computations, and generate output (our lives). Thats kind of a cool way to think about it right? is thinking about it this way helpful in any way? idk i think its basically another way of stating the transformation idea but i'm going to stop thinking right now because I'm getting myself confused.
On the plus side I went home this weekend. It was warm and full of friendship and good times and an 10 mile hike. There are 17 + 31 = 48 days until I go home for the summer. /sigh
0 days and this morning.
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That is a cool way to think about it. I'm sort of falling into the same circle...
ReplyDeleteUltimately, I think human experience CAN be reduced to a series of looping action potentials - one glorious, slightly sticky circuit diagram. But human memory and cognition are so different from computers. Full of goopy emergent properties and one element of cognition projecting organically into another. Storage capacity of the human brain for memory seems to be unlimited. We process input via a bunch of complementary, scattered, sort of parallel pathways, wired differently in everyone, and only sometimes corresponding to one sensory modality or another. One memory chains itself to another, some chains are more tenuous than others, and the whole thing seems to hang together on language. Without it, we don't really have consciousness. Imagistic thought isn't enough (doesn't compress information effectively enough/in the right way to make it manipulatable as thoughts), and linguistic thought is probably unique to humans. It'd be cool if it weren't.
Don't know where I'm going with this. I think I'm saying that humans are computers, but really badass ones that don't quite make sense. The difference is perhaps that humans can have basic, primitive awareness (but not "consciousness") without language, but a computer without an internal logic of some kind is sort of a brick that lights up? Maybe it's just a question of magnitude/complexity.
Maybe animals/things without language are just bricks that light up.
I want a ten mile hike. And sun. And friendship and good times.
Hooooookay. Enough.
Shit, don't read this unless you're actually interested in more circles, or if you have a lot of time on your hands.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scribd.com/doc/9647752/SEARLE-Is-the-Brains-Mind-a-Computer-Program
Keeping it short:
ReplyDelete1) I had no idea this was here until Bryan told me about it. O hai.
2) I think the primary difference between me as a computer and me as a person is that I can think that and know what it means. That was way too convolutedly stated, but I have no time to go back and figure out how to make it sound better.
3) Oh, to be home again.
4) Just because: http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2009/04/moon_trailer_space_madness_don.php