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@tyrell_turing

Thanks! I browsed your paper quickly & find it very useful because it clearly exposes the kind of misinterpretations & unsupported assumptions I'd expect in such an argument. I'll read it carefully, & we can have a genuine discussion.

I wonder: how much energy did it cost you to send this link? How much easier would that have been than your repeated whining about my provocations? Why post glib provocations yourself, if you don't want to engage? It all seems a bit odd to me.

@tyrell_turing

Ok. I read the paper carefully and actually really like it. It lays out your conceptual framework very clearly, which allows me to precisely pinpoint the holes in your argument.

The fundamental hidden assumption that is simply stated but not justified at all is that algorithmic computation "can be applied to almost any object in the universe."

Of course, we can simulate (approximate) anything, like throwing a ball, but the actual ball throw is not literally computation ...

@tyrell_turing

The important difference is between "making a computational model of the ball throw" vs the claim that the ball throw *is* computation, which it isn't, because (a) it has no symbolic content (other than that imputed on it by your model), and (b) it is not necessarily Turing-computable (as you claim without justification; but maybe you realize that classical mechanics, standardly used to describe the ball throw, is not computable because the real numbers are not) ...

@tyrell_turing

The second error is a simple flaw in your logic: human brains can calculate all computable functions (in theory), therefore the brain *is* a computer (equivalent to a Turing-machine).

Copeland calls this the equivalence fallacy. You cite his paper, but apparently have not read or digested that part of it?

The theory of computation is explicitly a theory of what *humans* can do by rote (as you write in the paper), so it is hardly a surprise that brains can do effective ...

@tyrell_turing

... computation. What you can't see (from within your computational small-world worldview) is that this is by far not all that brains do, nor did brains evolve to do this (most animal brains don't engage in this kind of activity at all, in fact).

The logic error: for the brain to be literally a computer, it would have to do nothing but compute (in the Turing sense). As I said above, you simply assume that this is the case, bcs you assume that the whole world is computable ...

@tyrell_turing

The problem is that this assumption is not supported by any evidence. There are tons of processes and problems in the actual (large) world that cannot be formalized in the sense of Hilbert.

One, for example, is how organisms realize what is relevant in their environment: how they pick out the features of the world that are important for their given situation. If you try to formalize that, you get an infinite regress. Same thing with organismic organization, as Rosen ...

@tyrell_turing

... has shown a long time ago. Life is not computable. Behavioral and evolutionary possibility spaces are not prestatable as clearly defined mathematical sets. Your assumption that every physical process *is* Turing-style computation is making the simple mistake of confusing the map (your model of the world) for the territory (the actual world).

Your computationalist worldview is based on a completely unfounded assumption. And it traps you thoroughly within a small world ...

@tyrell_turing

... as evidenced clearly by your article. Physical systems that are not vonNeumann computers (eg neuromorphic chips) can do a whole lot (in fact, infinitely) more than just calculate the set of Turing-computable functions (bcs they can have real-valued parameters). Just because you *can* perform Turing-computations with them, or model them with a computational model, does not mean such systems *are* literally computers.

@tyrell_turing

Your are right in pointing out that there are various physical implementations of systems that you can use to perform (more or less universal) effective computation. Your brain is one of them.

But you're totally wrong in your thinking that this is all that physical systems (incl. your brain) can do. The world is much richer than you think. But you can't see this, because you literally live inside your computational (small-world) model or the large world you actually live in.

@tyrell_turing

So this is *not* "just semantics." Or better: semantics matter a lot in the large world we live in.

Your Wittgensteinian definition of the meaning of a term is such a cop-out. "We use the term like this, so that's what it is."

Instead, it seems more useful to me to ask, how does the use of a term reflect on the problems we want to solve with it?

"Computation" really isn't helpful in this sense, if you want to understand those aspects of the brain which are organizational ...

@tyrell_turing

...rather than those connected to the subset of brain processes concerned with actual information processing.

In brief, your term "computation" *is* a metaphor & a pretty bad one, limiting you to only a sliver of the world when you should look at a bigger picture.

Your paper fails to address this problem, bcs it fundamentally fails to question its own assumptions, while dismissing those of others as not real.

Well, they *are* real. Just not in your small world. Consider that?

Yogi Jaeger

@tyrell_turing

P.S. Church and Turing would have very probably hated your interpretation of their theory of computation. Both, to the end of their lives, insisted that computation is about a certain kind of (human) activity, not about the brain or the world.

@tyrell_turing

P.P.S. If you don't understand what I mean by organizational vs. information-processing aspects of the brain, think about Weizenbaum's distinction between calculation (that's what computation captures) and judgment (that's what it does not, and was never intended to).

@tyrell_turing

Hmm. I was genuinely curious where you get the idea from that all physical processes must be Turing computable, and why you define a brain that can do effective computation (but also many other things besides) as "literally a computer" (when it is also many other things).

I was also interested what you have to say about simulation vs. reality.

But I guess that was it from your side?