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Article 2160 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: From neurons to computation: how?
Message-ID: <12721@pitt.UUCP>
Date: 16 Dec 91 12:31:22 GMT
References: <40640@dime.cs.umass.edu> <12707@pitt.UUCP> <40684@dime.cs.umass.edu>
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Organization: Decision Systems Laboratory, Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
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In article <40684@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:

>
>Well, obviously we can create thinking beings via sexual reproduction. In
>principle, one could do the same from the right collection of elemental
>chemicals. Maybe we could even find another recipe by trial and error.
>But we still would not understand how the things work.
>
It is very possible that we are not smart enough to figure out how
the brain works.  I've yet to see any reason to think that, however.
It is very possible that we will create a brain before we are able
to really understand how it works.  Perhaps we will have to invent
an artificial intelligence smarter than us to figure it out, for all
I know.
>>>brain, and whether these "elements" behave like digital computers. 
>>>
>>I must have missed where someone claimed that.
>
>

>>And I mean computable in the sense that physical computers as we build them
>>today could compute the same data transform as any given neuron (including
>>the temporal variability we calling learning).

OK, I agree with you on this.  We aren't very close with today's technology.
We can attack some simple pioneering problems, but we're a long ways
from being able to link billions of neural processors at this point.

-- 
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Gordon Banks  N3JXP      | "I have given you an argument; I am not obliged
geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu   |  to supply you with an understanding." -S.Johnson
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