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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9371419" data-attributes="member: 4937">That the brain doesn't use gears or pendulums can be observed.  That it doesn't use say NOR and NAND gates isn't something I'd be willing to state concretely.  That it doesn't use some approximation or variation on a statistical model is not something we can yet observe because the structure of the brain is way too complicated and too poorly understood.  I'm not sure why you think mentioning that it doesn't use giant space hamsters helps your point.  Yes, we have observed the workings of the brain enough to know that it's not got a giant space hamster in it.  But we haven't observed the workings of the brain well enough to know that some Markov chain is not being implemented at an organic level.  We can't even understand really how the neural nets we've created come up with answers, so how can we be sure how the human neural net comes up with answers?  How in the world did you leap from the idea that we can look in and not see a giant space hamster, to that we can look in and not see a particular algorithm at work?  Perhaps well-known algorithms organically evolve and are used at various points in the brain's logic chain as efficient solution solvers?  How would we see or not see them within the complex web of neural interfaces?  Perhaps there is a little Markov chain predictive model selecting the right adjective it thinks should be used for a size of something?  No one so far as I know knows, and I've both got a degree in computer science and a background in biology.  I'll gladly bow to your superior understanding if you happen to have a PhD thesis in this topic (and I'd love to hear your learned discourse because I find this endlessly fascinating), but I've talked to a lot of PhDs and I'm guessing using some algorithm I couldn't define "no".</blockquote>

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