| > idiotic article about the brain not processing information How about the brain creates information from constant interaction with the world based on the kinds of bodies we have and our needs/wants? This information doesn't exist as information until the brain creates it. Information is the product of minds. It doesn't exist in the world on it's own to be processed. As such, the brain is something other than a computing device. Computers exist because we figured out how to arrange physical systems to process information that's meaningful to us. But to nature, it's just a physical system (and not even that, since physics is a model of nature we create). That's Jaron Lanier's paraphrased argument against thinking of the brain as a computer. To say that information exists in the world to be processed is to make a metaphysical commitment that information exists ready made for us. > and there being something magical about human brains that cannot be simulated It doesn't have to be magical. There are different philosophical views on the world and the mind which lead to different conclusions. If one takes the hard problem of consciousness seriously, then consciousness cannot be computed. Not because of magic or the supernatural, but just because consciousness is not computable, since computation is itself an abstraction (Turing machines don't exist on their own anymore than do any other mathematical systems). Unless your metaphysics falls along the lines of Tegmark, Plato or Wheeler (it from bit). Instead you can think of The brain as an information creator. We give meaning to the world. We build models. The world itself just is, it's not information, math, physics or symbols. |