On Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 08:24:02PM -0800, SJS wrote:
begin quoting Darren New as of Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 07:11:50PM -0800:
SJS wrote:
>begin quoting Darren New as of Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 05:40:50PM -0800:
>>Ralph Shumaker wrote:
>>>Are there general purpose analog computers? Can they run programs in
>>>the sense that digital computers can?
>>You're thinking with one. ;-)
>
>That would be a big "no", then.
Sounds like a "yes" to me.
I'm not interpreting "in the sense" in the sense that you seem to be.
You are running a general purpose analog
computer, as a brain.
I thought it was pretty specialized, and not general purpose.
I would say that the human brain is more general purpose than any computer
that we've ever built. Computers we make have to be laboriously
programmed. The brain learns on its own. It can't be directly programmed,
and I don't think we're even close to understanding how it works. But, it
can be indirectly be programmed. Words like "study", and "practice" come
to mind.
I remember a documentary about these kids in a Japanese school that learned
arithmetic on an abacus. Many of them would practice to the point where
they didn't actually need the abacus. They had learned to visualize the
entire abacus and move the beads in their mind. Interestingly, most of
them still move their fingers in the motions of moving the beads. These
kids could perform large multiplications entirely in their heads at amazing
speed, on the order of seconds for 5-6 digit number being multiplied.
Dave
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