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by taeric
1348 days ago
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My argument is that you can perceive them to do the same things. Even though they are, in fact, doing something else. And this, in large, rests on your perception ignoring everything else about what happened in the process. When eating my food, did I slowly subtract all of the grams from the input of food that I was given? In a perception of the event? Yes. Would you say that I was slowly counting away at the grams of food? I was never even cognizant of the number of grams, so that is an odd take. Even if an outsider could have been aware of how many grams something is and that I would stand up on finishing. It does not make sense to call that counting, as you are advocating in this thread. Regarding the brain as a computer. This is an interesting one, as it is classically accepted and appeals heavily to the way we built up the idea of a modern computer. My take is that, if it is a calculator in that sense, it is only calculating on the simulation that it is building of and for itself. And that it is its own self interpretation that allows this view. |
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In statistical learning theory we colloquially refer to this as "averaging over the noise" which is, functionally, a very useful feature for a computing system to have.
> Would you say that I was slowly counting away at the grams of food?
No, I would say that the process of digestion slowly converted molecules of food into molecules of other stuff + heat. But that isn't even the relevant quantity in this instance, instead the relevant quantity is available energy for use in other parts of your body. In this framework both can be said to have been "computed" (there is a lot of information content in physical reality, so there is plenty to spare to represent both quantities through the same process), but I regard it as a failure of imagination to merely assume that I mean to say that counting integers is the same as collecting a quantity of something.
> I was never even cognizant of the number of grams, so that is an odd take.
Why do you need to be cognizant (aware) of something for it to have occurred? That presents as egocentric hubris to me. You will certainly experience something (having more energy to do other stuff) but you shouldn't expect that a priori and any subsequent experience is only incidental. Phenomenological experience is purely receptive, ie, only works with what it can receive.
> It does not make sense to call that counting, as you are advocating in this thread.
I am not calling it "counting", I am calling it "computing". I have been clear and consistent on that. Probably your definition of "computation" conflates the two, but the two are only synonymous in cases of digital computing.
> My take is that, if it is a calculator in that sense, it is only calculating on the simulation that it is building of and for itself.
This is what I mean by "abstract representation". The brain builds up a model of the world, dividing it into self and other. But there are more fundamental operations underpinning that process, and by now it is common parlance in the neurosciences to regard functional neuronal sub-circuits as "computing" things, even though we have no direct access to their inputs nor outputs. "We" as in "self-aware, sentient, cognitive beings with a functional world model" experience the representations which are built up on those more fundamental computations, and simulate the outside world, and that's the closest thing to "digital" computation that can be said to occur in our minds because of the relatively abstract nature of the representations.