[ExI] The digital nature of brains (was: digital simulations)

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2010/2/6 Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com>:

> Swobe is still wrong, but brains aren't Turing equivalent because the brain
> does NOT remain a constant T(n) but instead is composed of innumerable
> modular T(x); T(y); T(z); each is constantly changing the T-value of itself
> and adjacent virtual machines.  Each module has in it some semblance of
> UTM-ness allowing it to read others, perhaps owing to a greater mental
> structure of which we are not yet aware.

A Turing machine is limited in that it does not handle dynamic
interaction with an environment, as brains and digital computers do.
However, all digital computers are said to be Turing emulable, because
any computation the computer can do a Turing machine could also do. A
brain could be emulated on a digital computer provided that there is
nothing in the physics of the brain that is not computable. An example
of non-computable brain physics would be processes that require actual
real numbers a solution of the halting problem in order to model them.
Absent such complications, the brain (or any other part of the
universe) could be modelled by any digital computer with the right
program and enough memory.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou