>Computers, quite literally, process information – numbers, letters, words, formulas, images. The information first has to be encoded into a format computers can use, which means patterns of ones and zeroes (‘bits’) organised into small chunks (‘bytes’).<p>Sorry, now you are looking at a computer at the logical level, not the physical, what is it REALLY doing. If you are going to claim there is no place in the brain where a word or a piece of music is stored (presumably because there is no literal, printed word representation in your brain?) then you can't quite make the same claim of a computer.<p>We consider the components of a computer to be logically digital, but under the covers all transistors are analog, and all the workings of the computer are analog. We just throw away voltage transitions and we lump some range of voltages as "on" logically and some other range of voltages as "off" logically. It takes time for the circuits to reach their final state.<p>I assume the same is true of the brain. At some level, there are no symbols or numbers or memories to be found. There's just neurons firing or not, in context with other neurons. Same with computers, there's just little amplifiers supporting some voltage in some context with other amplifiers. That's it.<p>Or not, depending on what level you want to look it.
> Senses, reflexes and learning mechanisms – this is what we start with, and it is quite a lot, when you think about it. If we lacked any of these capabilities at birth, we would probably have trouble surviving.<p>> But here is what we are not born with: information, data, rules, software, knowledge, lexicons, representations, algorithms, programs, models, memories, images, processors, subroutines, encoders, decoders, symbols, or buffers – design elements that allow digital computers to behave somewhat intelligently. Not only are we not born with such things, we also don’t develop them – ever.<p>Looks like a terminological difference?
Previous discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11729499" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11729499</a><p>A comment I very much agree with:<p>> radarsat1 on May 19, 2016 [-]<p>> It's not even pedantic, it's just wrong. He's ignoring years of neuroscience.<p>> We know that the brain uses signals, and that these signals are composed of codes. We know that to interpret the world, certain information processing must take place. We are learning more about the exact nature of this processing, more about how neurons and even other fundamentals of the body code information and contribute to processing (e.g. chemical processes), but they definitely process information. We even know some of the codes.<p>> On the other hand, if the author wants to argue about the nature of what is information, what is processing.. he's going to have a steep hill to climb.
I think the author has confused himself into thinking that just like a computer has discrete physical components called RAM, CPU and Hard Disk, the human brain at some physical level has similar components. However when neuroscientists are talking about these terms they are talking in logical terms and not physical terms. The 'chemical changes' and 'rewiring of brain' that the author thinks are the reality of how the brain works are still compatible with the logical way in which computers work. The memory and computation and storage are distributed across large collection of neurons in the brain yet they logically conform to computer design principles.
The author seems to have missed out on the fact that information theory is a part of physics now. Not only are human brains computers. The entire universe is a computer. The author seems to think that a computer must use bus lines, clock signals and silicon in order to be a computer. In actual fact, a computer doesn't even need to have software. You can make a computer with just analog components, without any digital chips in sight.