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Article 2129 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Scaled up slug brains
Message-ID: <40650@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 15 Dec 91 00:07:02 GMT
References: <12677@pitt.UUCP> <60044@netnews.upenn.edu> <12689@pitt.UUCP>
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In article <12689@pitt.UUCP> geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks) writes:
>In article <60044@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>>Well, OK.  What is the evidence that human brains are merely a scaled
>>up version of slug brains?  (Besides certain USENET posters and US vice
>>presidents?)
>>
>>Would you call uranium merely a scaled up version of helium?  Would
>>you call the US economy a merely scaled up version of tribal barter?
>>Would you call USENET merely a scaled up talk(1)?
>
>The words "scaled up" are my detractors', not mine.  I would say
>that yes, the principles that cause the Helium atom to exist
>are the same ones that cause the uranium atom to exist and that
>understanding the helium atom is fundamental to understanding
>the uranium one, although perhaps the uranium is complex enough
>that there are additional principles involved in its understanding.
>I think the analogy holds.  The worm has the same basic elements
>as the human, although the human may have additional elements that
>do not exist in the worm, it appears that it is mainly a matter of
>complexity of connections and not new and different structures that
>characterize the differences, at least on an anatomic and neurochemical
>level.

Appears to whom? I must say that you have an interesting approach
to science. We understand a tiny bit of how system X works, system
Y is vastly more complicated than system X but contains similar looking
structures --- so assume that some unproven model of X is also a model of
Y. Steel gear boxes can be constructed from the same ingredients as
steel I-beams. Thus, using your approach, we conclude that a model of 
the behavior of a steel I-beam can be extended to describe the behavior of
a gear box.


