Hacker News Reader

This reminds of this article which contends that this mistake has carried across time, in every era people described the workings of the brain similar to the machines they knew how to build, which is why we have "ridiculous" descriptions that changed over time.

https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-informati...

View on HN

I like Leibniz's comparison of the brain to a mill, which he invokes in an argument[1] that seems to be the predecessor of the modern "hard problem:"

> supposing that there were a mechanism so constructed as to think, feel and have perception, we might enter it as into a mill. And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push one against another, but never anything by which to explain a perception.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz%27s_gap

Reply on news.ycombinator.com