[ExI] The symbol grounding problem in strong AI

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Sun Jan 10 01:53:27 UTC 2010


2010/1/10 BillK <pharos at gmail.com>:

> I think what Gordon might be trying to say is that the brain is not a
> *digital* computer.
>
> Digital computers separate data and program.
>
> The brain is more like an analogue computer. It is not like a digital
> computer that runs a program stored in memory. The brain *is* the
> program and *is* the computer. And it is a constantly changing
> analogue computer as it grows new paths and links. There are no brain
> programs that resemble computer programs stored in a coded format
> since all the programming and all the data is built into neuronal
> networks.
>
> If you want to get really complicated, you can think of the brain as
> multiple analogue computers running in parallel, processing different
> functions, all growing and changing and passing signals between
> themselves.

No-one claims that the brain is a digital computer, but it can be
simulated by a digital computer. The ideal analogue computer cannot be
emulated by a digital computer because it can use actual real numbers.
However, the real world appears to be quantised rather than
continuous, so actual analogue computers do not use real numbers. And
even if the world turned out to be continuous factors such as thermal
noise would make all the decimal places after the first few in any
parameter irrelevant, so there would be no need to use infinite
precision arithmetic to simulate an analogue device.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



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