Is the brain analogue, digital, or both?

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Please enlighten me.

― moley, Friday, 20 April 2007 06:59 (eighteen years ago)

If you equate digital with discrete and analog with sequential, then this paper says it's digital:

http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~celiasmi/Papers/ce.2000.continuity.debate.csq.html

but I think it's more like the light wave/particle thing. (particles moving in waves = both)

― StanM, Friday, 20 April 2007 07:07 (eighteen years ago)

~~sequential~~ continuous

― StanM, Friday, 20 April 2007 07:07 (eighteen years ago)

Roger Penrose sayeth:

-Consciousness is mysterious!
-Quantum mechanics is mysterious!

Ergo, Consciousness must be quantum.

― Masonic Boom, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:39 (eighteen years ago)

kate sums up The Emperor's New Mind in two sentences. thanks, saves me having to read the second half (after 10 years of not trying very hard) 8)

― koogs, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:43 (eighteen years ago)

I wish someone else had done that for me a long time ago, or I wouldn't have spent so much time reading it and the sequel.

Now if only someone would do the same for The Road To Reality!

― Masonic Boom, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:48 (eighteen years ago)

synaptic

― abanana, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:04 (eighteen years ago)

Wait, does Penrose really have that as his argument? I'd not heard of the book before, but that's bloody rubbish. The only way it would work on a logical level is if we used 'is' to mean '=', as in 'is identical to', when clearly in that context 'is' means 'has the property of' mysteriousness.

― emil.y, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:56 (eighteen years ago)

definitely quantum

― lfam, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:04 (eighteen years ago)

the brain is mythical

― moonship journey to baja, Saturday, 21 April 2007 00:06 (eighteen years ago)

human intelligence is like bigfoot or the loch ness, people swear they've seen it, but there's little evidence for it.

― moonship journey to baja, Saturday, 21 April 2007 00:07 (eighteen years ago)

after that abortion of a gun control thread i think the last thing ILX should be debating is neuroscience

― latebloomer, Saturday, 21 April 2007 00:10 (eighteen years ago)

vahid otm

― latebloomer, Saturday, 21 April 2007 00:15 (eighteen years ago)

Brane is a tasty milkshake, that also helps you think.

― Abbott, Saturday, 21 April 2007 00:16 (eighteen years ago)

Co,mma.

― Abbott, Saturday, 21 April 2007 00:16 (eighteen years ago)

ha, i'm totally slurping an actual milkshake right now

― latebloomer, Saturday, 21 April 2007 00:17 (eighteen years ago)

All known human-designed computers can be classed either digital or analog. The brain, however, is not a human-designed computer and I consider it highly unlikely that it functions upon any of the three bases to which you have restricted your question. So the correct answer is: probably not.

― Aimless, Saturday, 21 April 2007 00:18 (eighteen years ago)

i think the real question is whether an octopus has a "digital analog or both" brane:

http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/04/platformindependent_intelligen.php#more

― latebloomer, Saturday, 21 April 2007 00:22 (eighteen years ago)

organic

― Jeff, Saturday, 21 April 2007 00:25 (eighteen years ago)

definitely not quantum... continuous

― lfam, Saturday, 21 April 2007 00:45 (eighteen years ago)

Erik Davis posed that very question here at the EMP pop conference yesterday. He was on Scott's panel and was talking about Freak Folk and the Analog Ethic. His answer was more or less "depends on how you look at it" -- the same as how light can be viewed both as packets or bits (photons) or as waves.

― Maria :D, Sunday, 22 April 2007 14:52 (eighteen years ago)

four years pass...

Oldsters - at what point did people start expressing frustration at digital media and realize the native and cherished qualities of analogue were under threat. Can we ever go back?

― Hollis Frampton Comes Alive! (admrl), Wednesday, 2 November 2011 21:51 (fourteen years ago)

I just pulled up another box of old records from storage

― Muammar for the road (Michael White), Wednesday, 2 November 2011 22:11 (fourteen years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DTS2jzspSE

― ███★★★███ (PappaWheelie V), Wednesday, 2 November 2011 23:49 (fourteen years ago)

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