Could Our Brains just be Really Amazing Computers ???

Question

Our hearts are pumps, our lungs are air exchangers, our veins and arteries are plumbing, our kidneys and liver are chemical factories, our GI system is a raw material intake / waste management system. and our bones and muscles are levers, gears and hydraulics.

If all those things are bio-machines then why couldn't our brains just be really sophisticated computers running incredible software?

A

Answer 1

Great question.

Your analogy to man-made devices is somewhat of a backwards take on things, as most machinery is actually made to mimic living things. Nevertheless, machines or beings, both are designed to take some form of energy from the surrounding environment, and convert it into work.

In that regard, the brain is very much like a computer that controls the body, but it has one amazing difference that artificial intelligence can't approach (yet.) The ability to recognize, store and relate patterns to one another. This is how people are able to do simple things that are beyond the most powerful computers.

While our brains do function in a (sort of) binary way, with the firing of neurons occurring or not occurring, they also are able to instantly interconnect experiences (which are just patterns of neurons that fire in a prescribed way based on the chemical triggers) to form new patterns which didn't exist beforehand. In other words, WE LEARN. What's more amazing is that we can relate things INSTANTLY. Think about how you can recall a memory from an hour ago, yesterday, or your childhood all in the same span of time. You can also experience something in the present, instantly connect it to something that happened thirty years ago, and then immediately act on the combination of both the old and new information almost without thinking. It's miraculous.

The ability to think like this no doubt stemmed from our animalistic past, and the need to survive previously inexperienced phenomenon, but over time, we've adapted it to be able to create, envision, and imagine things that don't yet exist. This is something that has plagued computer scientists working on A.I. since the beginning.

Getting back to your original question, I guess we should ask ourselves, does the brain exist to control the body, or does the body exist to transport the brain around it's environment. Since, over time, intelligence seems to increase in complexity, one would have to say that the body exists to transport the brain around. This leads us to ask, did intelligence occur spontaneously, or was the body designed to be programmed?

With computers, the limitation to the capabilities of the software is ALWAYS the hardware. Even though programmers always find clever ways of doing things with limited hardware, there is always a limit. So far, this doesn't seem to be the case with the human brain. There seems to be no limit to how sophisticated our thought processes can become. We may only be able to remember and recall a certain amount of information, but being able to INNOVATE, and create previously unimagined connections between things seems to be limitless. In a sense, we are able to continually "re-write" our own operating systems, based on the new things we learn. Thank goodness too, because what a drag to think there was a limit on how much we could learn or know.

For this reason, I'd have to say that if our brains are like computers, they haven't been "programmed" with software in any conventional sense. They are just too fluid and adaptable to be compared to something as limited as a computer.

Answer 2

MAYBE they are certainly NOT binary on off sequential computes but yes they process information the huge Q is: how does the functioning brain produce what we know as self awareness Even for a worm, what does it "think" a very complex Q there is the famous "Turning Q" if you are on a phone or communications line with a person and are talking is it possible to distinguish a computer form a human? NOT an easy Q as far as we know no computer has ever suddenly said " who am I" there are lots of scienc ficition stories about that idea it may happen in your life time, probably not

Answer 3

The Brain Are Multiple-In-Organic Cells That are Mainly for Programmable Duty at the get go of your childhood. Unlike the Computer It's not organic or can it do cells divisions or multiplication.
The Arithmetic language of Division and Multiplications in the Computer are otherwise enbeded and pre-assimulated. Our Brains' Genes are alive or subject to interference of lights, abuses, and drugs as in America. Still this rebuild and some memories intacked. So our Brain is not a computer or immobile to change.

Answer 4

Our brains have the best software already included however we tend to get viruses more often. It's a shame some of us can get a new brain like we can throw out a computer. I think I Will root for computers then!

Answer 5

Programming provided by sensory input. Thank you for the accurate description of the human machine.

Answer 6

With the important difference that human thoughts could not be reproduced exactly given the same inputs

Answer 7

That's exactly what they are, organic computers. They come equipped with certain processing routines already hard-coded, but they are also programable, if you know how to work with the hard-coded stuff instead of trying to work against it...

Answer 8

In a sense they really are. And just like computers, someone created them and gave them software to run on: God. He's the original pirate of silicon valley :D

Answer 9

Yeah dude. But I doubt its a Dell!

Answer 10

In a sense.

But you are right, biologic organism are just squishy chemical machines.