No it isn’t. The dictionary defines “computer” as something that performs mathematical calculations. You are suggesting anything that anything responds to stimuli is performing arithmetic. I disagree.
A tardigrade is not a computer. A fungus is not a computer. A tree is not a computer.
Sorry, but this post gave me a serious headache. It switches between insightful description of the failings of artificial neural networks and seemingly ignoring those failings, from one sentence to the next.
Yeah, but as you correctly pointed out 2 sentences earlier:
That is just as true whether its simulated on a CPU, GPU, or FPGA.
-_
A cat is flexible. There are now flexible, folding phones. Putting a hinge on a phone doesn’t make it a good model for a cat.
While being programmable makes them more flexible, its still so many orders of magnitude less flexible than nervous systems that whether its programmable is beside the point.
This is almost makes me cry. No, that is not remotely the least little bit related to what I’m looking for. Explaining my ideas has never been a strong suit, but holy fuck I didn’t realize I was that bad at it.
As you correctly say in the next sentence:
Exactly. They’re just a fancy way to do high-dimensional curve fitting and have very little to do with biological neural processing
Exactly. Not at all a question of scale. The 2 things are just fundamentally different in kind, and no amount of adding more could change that.
You can keep saying that, but I will say this – your views are not those that seem to be gaining a foothold in the realm of synthetic biology. I have worked with synthetic biologists, though, and they very much do look at biomolecular processes including DNA and its functionalities as being fundamentally computational in nature.
When specific things happen in organisms in response to values that are, fundamentally, mathematical, I would say that brains n(and other systems) are quite clearly performing computation.
Last thought, though – it sure is hilarious to watch a bunch of materialists arguing about whether the brain is computational in nature. When in fact, this is really the only explanation for what a brain does that has been offered up by materialism. My nondualistic perspective is that the brain is a type of computer, and so is the universe itself – but computers have programmers, and this one does too. 
Yeah, I came here to make that point.
But then it’s a time-honored tradition, in popular-science writing about the mind, to assume one is the first person ever to give the matter serious thought.
Perhaps a compromise is necessary:
neurons are akin to computers.
glial cells are akin to routers.
neurons communicate across the brain in packet switched networks.
the brain as a whole is akin to a very large scale network-- the internet.
The oft repeated analogy about the internet interpreting censorship as damage and routing around it may be more applicable thann we know.
It’s very difficult to discuss a book when the publishers haven’t even released excerpts 
hack-zone
What you see is a myosin protein dragging an endorphin along a filament to the inner part of the brain’s parietal cortex which creates happiness. Happiness. You’re looking at happiness.
Dig those shoes! n sassy swagger! Makes me think of Oiran:
As awesome as that is, the swagger gives it away as a kinesin protein, not myosen. From Snopes:
snopes has really branched out.
Indeed, that was one of the more impressive and satisfying fact checks that I’ve read.
Wow, your reply is really harsh, and I don’t understand why. I was just laying out the range of options that people are currently experimenting with because it sounded like you were interested. Instead I seem to have offended you. I’ll just stop now because what I thought was a fun conversation with an interested party is apparently something else.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be harsh. I was expressing my frustration with the whole thing; this isn’t just a thread topic for me, its very much my livelihood. I research neural computation for a living. For me that involves a mix of physiology, comparative/evolutionary biology, psychophysics, and computational modeling, but all with the singular goal of understanding how brains process information. All grants, publication, and teaching I do is therefore dependent on being able to explain why I think the current prevailing approach to neuroscience is unproductive and why I’ve chosen the approach I have. Failing completely at that in this thread is part of a broader, daily frustration. I didn’t mean to take that out on you
Reading this thread reminded me of The Dermis Probe. Idries Shah’s 1970 modern take on an old Sufi story about a group of scientists/sages debating about the nature of an unfamiliar beast (an elephant), through the disparate lenses of their especialties.
With that said - thought this was an interestingly apropos write-up on another recently published book in the field that makes the interesting assertion that the neo-cortex is …
"150000 spaguettis"
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