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Well the brain is not necessarily the most sophisticated computer around, it's more like the best processor currently around town (Earth) but not even necessarily the best model currently in the universe, or the best model for the upcoming future (I'm just nit-picking, sorry!).

Our (non-neuron) cells themselves are highly autonomous, specialized, and together form quite a powerful processing unit too (processing in the sense that they basically act on information that they receive).

Brains, I believe, are even messy processors, subject to way too many failures, exceptions, bugs. Contradiction, in general let's say, is impossible in an AMD processor ... but in our brains it's a daily event.

by Alex in Toulouse on Fri Jan 27th, 2006 at 08:55:07 AM EST
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The brain is a mess. It's a computer whose bits have been repurposed, patched, extensions tacked on all around the place by a million different engineers none of whom comment the code or document the hardware changes. The cabling is all over the place and unlabelled. It's good at at certain things and appalling at lots of others. It can't even remember a short list without re-inputing it a couple of times, the arithmetic module is rubbish and as for the logic module ...
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Fri Jan 27th, 2006 at 09:02:08 AM EST
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I particularly liked your "the cabling is all over the place", it kind of reminds me of some situations I've been in!!

One thing we can also add is that the brain's indexing system, unlike a decent x86 and x86_64's, is totally out of control. You remember a girlfriend's laughter when you're holding a pack of chips, you remember something that someone said somewhere when you slip and fall in the staircase, etc etc

by Alex in Toulouse on Fri Jan 27th, 2006 at 09:09:09 AM EST
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I don't believe I've associated a girlfriends laughter with a packet of chips, but I think I know what you mean.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Fri Jan 27th, 2006 at 09:10:15 AM EST
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I'm an adherent of Stupid Design.
by Nomad (Bjinse) on Fri Jan 27th, 2006 at 09:34:39 AM EST
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But it has an awesome pattern recognition module! It can even recognize groups of up to 4 items without counting them (link).

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jan 27th, 2006 at 09:39:30 AM EST
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