[marcosdumay]

> If true this seems to me (very much a non-expert) to give serious doubt to the notion that the brain is a computer.

Yeah. It also puts Quantum Mechanics into serious doubt...

So, I'll wait for better evidence than some random person on the internet thinking it feels right.

[sykic]

If I’m the random person you are referring to then you should not rely on evidence from me. My conclusion was based on what was written by the author of the article. I quoted from the article. You may want to rely on what the author says or on another expert. I did state that my opinion was a non expert one. The quote I made said that even if one had a snapshot of the current state of a person’s brain that would be meaningless without the full history of that brain’s owner. That’s a pretty damning fact if one wants to think of a brain as a computer.

I see from another comment that you disagree with the author. I’m guessing you aren’t an expert in this area either. Do you have more than visceral reasons to doubt the author’s conclusion? The author’s credentials seem to imply that he has thought about these issues far more that you or I. He presumably knows much more about how the brain works than you do. Why do you think your few minutes of thought on this article are enough to discount what he says and his conclusions? Isn’t that a bit arrogant?

[marcosdumay]

Well, your comments are both much more reasonable and deserve much more confidence than the article. But no, not your comments, not the article, and not the quoted neurologist even assuming the article's author understood him correctly (what would be an exception) are enough.

That kind of claim requires a clear and reproducible effect, and confirmation of many people that they looked and found the it. That's the kind of claim that if I did an experiment and got the result myself, I wouldn't still trust it.

[sykic]

I understand your position better now. Thank you.

The quote I made certainly goes against my intuition. But I’ve not studied the issue and don’t know enough about it to trust my intuition. Apparently though there are people who have studied this at the level of an expert and they believe it. At the very least this indicates that possibly my intuition is wrong and that I shouldn’t be so ready to discount the article.