[ExI] Is the brain a digital computer?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 25 February 2010 02:04, Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 24 February 2010 13:24, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The physical Church-Turing thesis has not been proved. Non-computable
>> functions exist as mathematical objects, but it is not known if they
>> play a role in physics, or in the physics of the brain in particular.
>
> I take "non-computable" in this sense simply to mean that there are no
> algoritmic shortcuts, and that you have to run the system (or any
> emulation thereof) to see where it leads.
>
> Remaining in the field of cellular automata, a few instances of such
> scenario are easily found.
>
> But this does mean that the final outcome of step "n" cannot be
> determined by any universal computer which goes through the very same
> steps. Very possibly, with a definite loss of performance.
>
> In this sense, I think one could be reasonably argue that a human
> brain might be the most efficient way to produce a human identity.
> Many AGI partisans take on the contrary a little too much for granted
> that an electronic computer could easily compete with it...

There are many examples of non-computable numbers, functions and
problems in mathematics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_number
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_function
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_undecidable_problems


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou