Comment by atroyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atroyn | Hacker News Reader

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> There's frankly little reason to believe the brain is special in any particular way, simply complex and layered.

Which is precisely the point I'm making. I deliberately avoided any woo about non-determinism, biology, or consciousness by providing examples of the time evolution of purely deterministic dynamical processes, very simple ones, which produce behaviors that are provably not computable in any reasonable time and have infinite (informational, not thermodynamic) entropy.

The complexity classes of generating additional bits of precision are much worse than exponential in many cases, and these are just ordinary everyday systems - nothing so complex as a brain. You provide examples of flaws in human cognition, which I acknowledge, but pointing them out does nothing to advance the idea that the brain is a computer.

> time evolution of purely deterministic dynamical processes, very simple ones, which produce behaviors that are provably not computable in any reasonable time and have infinite (informational, not thermodynamic) entropy.

But time evolution isn't relevant. Even supposing such systems exist naturally, you're conflating simulation time with real time.

> You provide examples of flaws in human cognition, which I acknowledge, but pointing them out does nothing to advance the idea that the brain is a computer.

"The brain is a computer" is a very different claim to "the brain can be simulated by a computer". I've only claimed the latter.

> Even supposing such systems exist

They do, I gave examples.

> Conflating simulation with real time

I am not talking about real time, only about finite time for any Turing machine. No matter how fast you make your machine, I can ask for another digit of precision. As I mentioned earlier, you are also bounded on how fast your machine gets to be much earlier than I'm bounded on digits. You'll be running my double pendulum until the heat death of the universe, and using all the mass energy available to do it.

> The brain is a computer" is a very different claim to "the brain can be simulated by a computer"

These are equivalent by the universality of Turing machines. You are in fact making this claim, even if you don't realize it.

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