Re: Sue Blackmore lecture Wednesday 5.15pm London

From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Wed 19 Feb 2003 - 22:06:51 GMT

  • Next message: Grant Callaghan: "Re: Sue Blackmore lecture Wednesday 5.15pm London"

    At 12:02 PM 19/02/03 -0500, you wrote:
    >on 2/18/03 8:01 PM, Keith Henson at hkhenson@rogers.com wrote:
    >
    >
    >[snip]
    >
    > >
    > > Do you grok computer worms? The sort that clogged the net recently? Just
    > > about anything you can say about memes and humans has a counterpart in the
    > > relation of computer worms or viruses and computers. To be useful,
    > > computers must have some inputs open.
    >
    >I understand them well enough. I just don't think they tell us anything
    >useful about how human brains work. In general, I'm quite skeptical about
    >the general analogy between brains and computers. There is little evidence
    >that brains function by passing patterns of bits from one place to another
    >and by transforming one pattern of bits into some other pattern.

    Do you have any doubt that one of the things humans do is copy information?

    Do you have any doubt that one of the things computers do is copy information?

    For *this function* (at least) a "black box" view of human and computers is similar.

    How either one of these black boxes does it internally doesn't matter for high level analysis.

    Keith Henson

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