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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [H-] [ In reply to ]
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The empty brain Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer


Yes and no. He objects to use of the word "stored" to describe how memories are present in the brain. He does not claim that memories are not in the brain.


Well above is the title of the article. There are also several other comments in the article alluding to the idea that the brain does not store information. In essence it seems the author is alluding to the idea that the brain is a bus bar, conduit to move information not process, store or manipulate it.

I could be wrong.

Exactly. That is what I've been saying and what the author has said.


As above I don't think that is what the author and certainly not Guru is saying at all.


The scientific research on the subject shows that the brain picks a few features of an objects and remembers them. As the author's experiment shows, these features are sufficient to allow recognition when an object is seen again, however they are insufficient to form an image.

A picture is nothing more then high definition of a few features. The brain typically filters out information that is extraneous. Yes you remember driving to work today but you don't remember the license plate numbers or every car you saw desite the fact that you more then likely saw the liscense plate of every car in front of you.

However if you purposely looked at the license plate you would remember the "Details" of the numbers. If you got out and studied it further you would notice tints of colors, scratches etc...details of details and so on. It's merely a mater of necessity, not a mater of ability. It's like taking a JPG and storing it and running thru a compression file. The unnecessary data is discarded. You can even store it at a lower and lower resolution and compress it. At some point it becomes no longer recognizable as the original picture.


Do you have an image of the house across the street in your head? Try to visualize it. What details do you see?


I have a picture of the house across the street in my head...Seems to me this is all the evidence we need. Can I tell you if there is a scratch off the paint on the third board up from the bottom on the left hand corner of the house? No, I have no bothered to study the house that closely. Is there specific information about the house I can not recall, yes. Is my recollection perfect, no. None of this says we "Don't have an image" it says we don't store perfect images with infinite resolution with perfect recall.

Take a picture of the house across the street and store it on your HD. If that picture is no high enough resolution you won't be able to read the address on the door. Leave in on the HD for a couple years and there might be portions of the HD that goes bad and when you recall that picture you might have something in the picture that was not their originally. Compress that picture because it's old and you need more HD space and you lose even more detail...and so on.

No one would argue that any of this says "We don't store images on HD's"


I read (and referenced) a wiki article on the subject of visual memory and it does not seem to suggest that the brain stores images.


Can you explain how storing information that is used to create a picture is not storing an image? If I have a picture that I store on a HD and I recall one bit of that picture it's simply a "0" or a "1". This is not a picture, it is a "Detail of a picture". How is this any different then recalling "A dollar bill has a 1 in the corner of it"? A computer simply recalls the one's and zero's and processes them.

~Matt













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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [MJuric] [ In reply to ]
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As above I don't think that is what the author and certainly not Guru is saying at all.

There is the problem -- association with guru has blocked people from reading and understanding the article. The author is trying to expand our understanding by pointing out that we use very limited metaphors to understand brain function. For instance, here is how you described brain function:

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memories are over written, moved out and I suspect degraded until they are permanently removed to allow room for new memories
I agree. All I'm saying (and what I think the author is saying) is that the process you described does not fit what we commonly describe as "storage." If you give a box of blankets to your friend to "store" while you are moving and two months later you come back and find some are fine, some have been cut up and made into quilts, and some have been thrown away, you would say "that is not what I meant when I asked you to store them.

________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev
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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [Gurudriver10] [ In reply to ]
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Information? You define it first, please.

Why should I define it I'm not making the claim that information is not held in the brain. In order for me to understand this position I must know YOUR definition of information, my definition is irrelevant to your belief.

Second, if you don't know about the naturalistic problems with consciousness, then we are done here for a while. You have some reading to do!

No, not really. Again YOUR definition of a problem is not something I need to study. I need for YOU to define what the problem is as I see no problem.

Third morality, you are still stuck on what is "good" from our conversation you let lapse a few months ago.

No, not stuck at all. My definition and belief states this out very clearly.

You were unable to define it and derive morality for society in general.

Again, no I wasn't. You may not agree with it but I was more then able to define it.

This is actually my point. You continually claim people are not doing something but the reality is that you simply disagree with it and thus claim that people have "Failed to present their position". No, it's been presented, you simply disagree with it.

~Matt



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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [H-] [ In reply to ]
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I agree. All I'm saying (and what I think the author is saying) is that the process you described does not fit what we commonly describe as "storage." If you give a box of blankets to your friend to "store" while you are moving and two months later you come back and find some are fine, some have been cut up and made into quilts, and some have been thrown away, you would say "that is not what I meant when I asked you to store them.

I'd disagree. I don't think two many people believe in "Perfect storage" and also understand that "Perfect" changes depending on item being stored and efforts involved to store them.

If you hand me a tupperware container with your lunch for the day and said "Hey could you store this for me", I would walk into the office and place it in the refrigerator. You would not come back a year latter and proclaim "Hey, WTF!? I asked you to store my lunch and all that is in the tupperware dish is a black stain"...assuming the dish was there at all. At the same time if you handed me 16 ounces of gold and said "Hey could you store this for me" I would probably go get a safe or safety deposit box and it would be the exact same thing in a year. However it may no longer be a gold bar in 4 billion years and certainly would not be exactly where I put.

Your computer does this sort of thing all the time. You "Store" files which you expect to be there forever...except we also back up everything because we know that the storage on our computers also degrades and a fails. We also have "Temporary" files which appear and removed, over and over and over. We also have files that are only stored in RAM and disappear as soon as you shut the machine off.

For the most part this really is no different then what your brain does.

~Matt





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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [LorenzoP] [ In reply to ]
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The problem with consciousness is that no one has any idea how brain activity creates consciousness, nor does any one have even a working model - or even a wild-ass guess how electro-chemical impulses passing between neurons creates awareness. It sure appears that the brain is necessary for consciousness - but no one has proved that brain activity is all we need to explain consciousness.
Of course, it would be an error to jump from this 'not knowing' to the existence of a soul.
Furthermore, I don't know where the author gets the notion the brain doesn't store 'images' - by all accounts that still can be demonstrated. Not only that, but the author's (and Gurudriver's) only recourse is to jettison the Materialist framework (that there is a real external physical world and consciousness is the result of a physical process) - - - or else claiming that the brain does not store images/memories you're just chasing your tail.

I don't read the author as saying the information is not in the brain. I see him using hyperbole a bit to challenge us to think about how we understand this "storage" happening. He is trying to make the point that common, everyday understanding of "storage" and of "images" give us a false understanding of what is happening in the brain.

Perhaps the author has an agenda to argue that memories are kept in some immaterial place like a soul. I didn't come to that conclusion reading the article.

________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev
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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [MJuric] [ In reply to ]
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Your computer does this sort of thing all the time. You "Store" files which you expect to be there forever...except we also back up everything because we know that the storage on our computers also degrades and a fails. We also have "Temporary" files which appear and removed, over and over and over. We also have files that are only stored in RAM and disappear as soon as you shut the machine off.
For the most part this really is no different then what your brain does.

The brain does what it does, and it is very different from a computer. For instance, does a computer change data as the brain does, so that memories can be false?

My point, and I believe the author's point, is that your metaphor is, at best, very crude. Further, your understanding of brain functioning (and even the understanding of a neuroscientist) is so limited that you have no basis to make or defend your metaphor.

________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev
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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [H-] [ In reply to ]
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But here is what we are not born with: information, data, rules, software, knowledge, lexicons, representations, algorithms, programs, models, memories, images, processors, subroutines, encoders, decoders, symbols, or buffers – design elements that allow digital computers to behave somewhat intelligently. Not only are we not born with such things, we also don’t develop them – ever.


We don’t store words or the rules that tell us how to manipulate them. We don’t create representations of visual stimuli, store them in a short-term memory buffer, and then transfer the representation into a long-term memory device. We don’t retrieve information or images or words from memory registers. Computers do all of these things, but organisms do not.


I don't read the author as saying the information is not in the brain. I see him using hyperbole a bit to challenge us to think about how we understand this "storage" happening.


I don't see him making the direct connection that Guru is to "The soul" but I see a similar argument and or simply a really poorly written article trying to say "Our brains are not as organized or as precise as computer storage". I don't think you're going to get any argument with the idea that are brains store and recall information in a more organic, less organized and less precise way then your PC. That is different then saying "Your brain doesn't store any information" and honestly after perusing over the article I can't tell which one he is saying.

~Matt

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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [H-] [ In reply to ]
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The brain does what it does, and it is very different from a computer. For instance, does a computer change data as the brain does, so that memories can be false?

Yes. It's called a corrupted file. We have purposefully entered systems into PC's in order to prevent and recognize this, but it happens all the time either via mechanical or software failure. Furthermore just like the brain we could easily set up a computer to "Degrade" information in the same way the brain does.

For instance let's say we had a video surveillance system. It recorded 10 days an 1080P but had storage for 50 days. After 10 days it takes the 1080P "Images" and compresses them by degrading them to 720P to save space. Then after another 10 days it degrades them to 640 X 480, then smaller and smaller until it finally deletes them all together.

Another example is the idea that no recording at all takes place until motion is detected. The camera could be on "Seeing" everything but the only time something is committed to memory is when motion is detected. This is actually what the brain does except with a far more complex filter.

My point, and I believe the author's point, is that your metaphor is, at best, very crude. Further, your understanding of brain functioning (and even the understanding of a neuroscientist) is so limited that you have no basis to make or defend your metaphor.

Or the authors understanding of computers is very crude :-)

I'm not claiming that the metaphor is correct, because of course we are in our infancy of our understanding of the brain. Maybe something as of yet completely unknown is taking place. However, again, "Not knowing" does not make something incorrect or mean we should jump to some other conclusion. The metaphor of a computer is just as viable as anything else at this point and will remain so until something is discovered that says "Well that's not what happens in a computer".

~Matt









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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [MJuric] [ In reply to ]
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Inadequate answers, very poor definitions, and circular reasoning don't make good arguments, buddy.
T


MJuric wrote:
Information? You define it first, please.

Why should I define it I'm not making the claim that information is not held in the brain. In order for me to understand this position I must know YOUR definition of information, my definition is irrelevant to your belief.

Second, if you don't know about the naturalistic problems with consciousness, then we are done here for a while. You have some reading to do!

No, not really. Again YOUR definition of a problem is not something I need to study. I need for YOU to define what the problem is as I see no problem.

Third morality, you are still stuck on what is "good" from our conversation you let lapse a few months ago.

No, not stuck at all. My definition and belief states this out very clearly.

You were unable to define it and derive morality for society in general.

Again, no I wasn't. You may not agree with it but I was more then able to define it.

This is actually my point. You continually claim people are not doing something but the reality is that you simply disagree with it and thus claim that people have "Failed to present their position". No, it's been presented, you simply disagree with it.

~Matt


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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [Gurudriver10] [ In reply to ]
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Gurudriver10 wrote:
Inadequate answers, very poor definitions, and circular reasoning don't make good arguments, buddy.
T

So you finally agree that you are full of it. Cool, now we can move on.

I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.
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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [Gurudriver10] [ In reply to ]
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nadequate answers, very poor definitions, and circular reasoning don't make good arguments, buddy

Wow, really? I ask you for your definition of information, explain why your definition is necassary and you ignore the question entirely and somehow it's a problem with my argument...

As to everything else, you're right, your poor definitions, why I'm asking for your definition, circular reasoning...don't make very good arguments.

~Matt

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Re: Our Brains Are Not Computers [MJuric] [ In reply to ]
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You are way behind and trying to bombard with aimless questions, as usual. Eternal skepticism is not a world view that can be sustained!
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