In what ways are we humans like computers?

[Robert_Sock]

This is something I have given a lot of thought to, and I have several simulaties in mind, but I would like your thoughts first. I will say though, I think God can save most of us on an old fashioned floppy!

 

[Blue_Horizon]

This is something I have given a lot of thought to, and I have several simulaties in mind, but I would like your thoughts first. I will say though, I think God can save most of us on an old fashioned floppy!

When they can pass a Turing test I will start expending some mental effort on this issue .

Until then I have better things to think about myself!

 

[Beryllos]

It is easier for me to see differences. Computers perform certain kinds of tasks with speed and reliability that humans cannot approach even remotely. Look at their ability to perform arithmetic and logical operations, and to sort and search huge amounts of data. Humans perform other kinds of tasks with ease and accuracy which computers cannot match, at least not yet. One example is our ability to recognize and follow separate musical instruments as we listen to a complex arrangement. Another example is the planning, control, and adaptation of our bodily movement over many types of terrain and obstacles.

 

[dmar198]

This is something I have given a lot of thought to, and I have several simulaties in mind, but I would like your thoughts first. I will say though, I think God can save most of us on an old fashioned floppy!

There are accidental similarities and substantial similarities. Substantially, humans and computers can both calculate and both have material properties. Also, they both take time to perform mathematical functions because they both do this using mechanical processes. Accidentally, both use electricity and both are on earth. I’m not sure of many similarities beyond those. What do you have in mind?

 

[GEddie]

This is something I have given a lot of thought to, and I have several simulaties in mind, but I would like your thoughts first. I will say though, I think God can save most of us on an old fashioned floppy!

Even the most unused human mind would have several million times that

 

[Usige]

Well I would say computers are superficially like humans rather than vice versa. At that the similarities are only superficial.

With regard to your reference to floppies (all our younger readers are scratching their heads right now [think thumb drives only about 1,500 - 90,000 times less storage])? Yes we both have ways to store and access memory, but what memory is for each is completely different. For a computer it is minutely detailed facts if you will, but humans generally store impressions based on facts. So lets say you split the signal from a camera and feed it to two different computers. Each would essentially store the same information. If two humans were to view the same scene they could (and likely would) store that information completely differently. Why? Because human memories are always colored by our emotions, personal histories and biases. A computer could have some type of filtering added, but it is not inherent to the operation of the computer. Even when we retrieve a memory, later information will color or degrade that memory. That type of unintended mutation of memory would be considered corruption in a computer’s retrieval.

I’d be interested to see how people see computers and humans as alike.

 

[Giggly_Giraffe]

Redo: In what ways are humans like smartphones & pads?

We are dependent on a great number of like devices, towers, and satalites to maintain prefered performance.

We outdate with cultural cycles in education, finance, fashion, speed, and operational wear & tear.

We need constant recharging.

We do not always sync well with other technology.

Our survival depends on those who came before us, people we encounter today, and Inovation and safeguarding for tomorrow.

 

[fisherman_carl]

There are accidental similarities and substantial similarities. Substantially, humans and computers can both calculate and both have material properties. Also, they both take time to perform mathematical functions because they both do this using mechanical processes. Accidentally, both use electricity and both are on earth. I’m not sure of many similarities beyond those. What do you have in mind?

There is actually debate amongst philosophers whether computers actually calculate anything. Since they are merely executing algorithms with no actual knowledge of what they are doing. They are not aware of anything much less that any sort of arithmetic is occurring. For instance, I could create a calculator that for every operation of arithmetic it added one to the end digit. And I could call this maddittion. The calculator does not know any different and performs the same functions as any other calculator but produces the wrong results. The difference is the intention of the designer. Thus, it is the human designer that manipulates the results of the calculator.

Similarly if I hold a puppet on a string and make it walk across the stage is the puppet really walking or am I manipulating the puppet to stimulate walking? The puppet isn’t really walking. I am manipulating it to stimulate walking. The puppet is actually a lifeless piece of wood.

Likewise a calculator is like a puppet that is being manipulated by the intentions and design of the human minds behind it. The calculator isn’t really doing anything. It is a puppet that is on a string that simulates human calculations. Unaware of the difference between adding or madding. The calculator simply has more sophisticated strings and components than the wooden puppet, but is just as lifeless without the designer who manipulates it to appear ‘alive’.

Now if I can make use of mechanical advantage to make the puppet walk faster than any human can does that make the puppet better at walking than humans? Of course not. The puppet can not really walk. Don’t be fooled by the puppet. The real genius is the human behind it.

See this article
edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2013/10/do-machines-compute-functions.html?m=1

 

[SecretCatholic]

This is something I have given a lot of thought to, and I have several simulaties in mind, but I would like your thoughts first. I will say though, I think God can save most of us on an old fashioned floppy!

The electronic computer is the first human invention that can perform numerical calculations, classify and categorize data as well as simulate physical objects non-physically. In effect, it is the first human invention that can do things only minds can do in nature (not only the human mind, but animal minds and the immaterial minds of the angels and of course the almighty as well). There is an obvious connection between the mind and the brain. Our brains are electro-chemical. Computers are electronic, so there is another similarity, but they are not chemical nor biological in nature, so this is a dissimilitude.

I think a lot of people have an over-simplified view of computer technology today. Some believe that because they are “merely” calculating machines, they could never accomplish some tasks that people like to think that only human beings, or living beings, can do. But this appears to be a kind of feel-good reductionism. In fact, facial recognition and neural networks (look that up) have proven that computers can do things that otherwise only human beings and animals could do (a dog also has “facial recognition”).

On the other hand, some people think that it’s just a matter of time that computers/robots become full-fledged people. I think this points to materialism. We all know that human beings are body-soul composites. So no, no particular arrangement of matter or super-fast quantum processor will make a human being.

However, remember that we believe that animals have “material souls”, so expect computers eventually to be able to do much of what animals do, in ways that imitate human interaction. The problem is that I think it may be possible for machines to become “soulless” minds- in other words, a “person” that can out-think the best of us, but has no soul. This would be a tragedy for humanity, I think. Another possibility is that God would allow complex-enough machines to be ensoulled, which is another end-of-the-world scenario.

In any case, to address your “floppy disk” comment- I think, in principle physical phenomenon are mathematical and with enough information can be stored as non-physical data (well it will have some physical representation on some storage medium, of course). And so yes, I think the physical “body” component of the human being can be “stored” as data. Of course, not on a floppy drive. It would take much more storage capacity than that, but the concept and principles are the same.

That said, I don’t believe that the “soul” component can be reduced (or “compressed”) into data, as that is outside the confines of the physical world. And while a computer would not be able to, I am sure that God’s mind can indeed “store” both body and soul.- After all, everything came from God’s mind anyway.

Is that enough speculation for you?

 

[Robert_Sock]

Some of the similarities that I notice:

1. We both have working memory. In humans it’s known of immediate memory. In my computer I have 8GB of working memory, we have a extremely measly immediate memory of just 5-9 bytes.
2. Computer hard drives get fragmented and need to get defragmented, while psychologists claim that the human mind also get fragmented and the pieces need to be re-integrated.
3. Both human and computers are affected by viruses. In computes it rewrites code and in humans viruses alters our DNA.
4. Computers lead to the idea of artificial intelligence, and I personally believe that human to can become enriched by artificial intelligence.
5. Both computers and humans are based on hardware and software. in humans the brain is the hardware and the mind is the software.
6. Both computers and humans operate on electricity!
7. Computer are known to break down, and the same goes for us.
8. Computers can be put into sleep, and the same for humans.
9. Computers are made for a purpose and us religious believe that we too were made for a purpose. “Meatbots” refers to biological robots, and I often see us as having been created meatbots which causes us to do work.
10. Computer can learn things on their own and is called artificial intelligence and we too can learn on our own.
11. Much of artificial intelligence is modeled from humans.

 

[aclausen]

There are accidental similarities and substantial similarities. Substantially, humans and computers can both calculate and both have material properties. Also, they both take time to perform mathematical functions because they both do this using mechanical processes. Accidentally, both use electricity and both are on earth. I’m not sure of many similarities beyond those. What do you have in mind?

The brain is more like several computers, with some considerable neural hardware in place to manage communications between various parts of the brain. The most obvious are the differences in how the two hemispheres of the cerebrum function, and the precise nature of their duties, but also goes further, with semi-independent centers managing sensory (name removed by moderator)ut from various sources, as well as lower level functions found in the brain stem and other parts of the “primitive” brain.

Individual neurons are certainly analogous to computers, with their fire/don’t fire states, but the devil is in the details. While work has been done to emulate neural networks in silicon, in general most computers are designed to be considerably more efficient than an animal brain.

 

[fisherman_carl]

The electronic computer is the first human invention that can perform numerical calculations, classify and categorize data as well as simulate physical objects non-physically. In effect, it is the first human invention that can do things only minds can do in nature (not only the human mind, but animal minds and the immaterial minds of the angels and of course the almighty as well). There is an obvious connection between the mind and the brain. Our brains are electro-chemical. Computers are electronic, so there is another similarity, but they are not chemical nor biological in nature, so this is a dissimilitude.

A computer doesn’t actually do anything like an immaterial mind. In fact it needs a human mind to do anything. Like a puppet it simply is being manipulated by a human mind. The computer stores electrical charges. That is all a computer does. It still takes a human mind to create / associate symbols with them that represent things. It takes a human mind to interpret the data displayed on the screen. It takes a human mind to write code that the computer executes. It is not even as smart as a trained monkey. It simply processes electrical charges. It is the programmer (a human mind) that is smart enough to manipulate out of it the results he wants. Again, you would not say that a puppet is the first thing humans have created that does the same thing that humans do. A puppet can appear to be walking and talking but it is just being manipulated by a human. A computer is just a more sophisticated puppet.

There is no doubt, then, as to what the machine is doing. It adds, calculates, recalls, etc., by simulation. What it does gets the name of what we do, because it reliably gets the results we do (perhaps even more reliably than we do) when we add by a distinct process. The machine adds the way puppets walk. The names are analogous. The machine attains enough reliability, stability, and economy of output to achieve realism without reality. A flight simulator has enough realism for flight training; you are really trained, but you were not really flying. [emphasis added]

edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2013/10/do-machines-compute-functions.html?m=1

 

[fisherman_carl]

A computer doesn’t actually do anything like an immaterial mind. In fact it needs a human mind to do anything. Like a puppet it simply is being manipulated by a human mind. The computer stores electrical charges. That is all a computer does. It still takes a human mind to create / associate symbols with them that represent things. It takes a human mind to interpret the data displayed on the screen. It takes a human mind to write code that the computer executes. It is not even as smart as a trained monkey. It simply processes electrical charges. It is the programmer (a human mind) that is smart enough to manipulate out of it the results he wants. Again, you would not say that a puppet is the first thing humans have created that does the same thing that humans do. A puppet can appear to be walking and talking but it is just being manipulated by a human. A computer is just a more sophisticated puppet.

edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2013/10/do-machines-compute-functions.html?m=1

anon Im taking computer science in college. Im an electrical engineering major. Not that that matters for the argument but people who think like this usually are impressed by credentials. Anyway all computers do something that can be essentially boiled down to translating one symbol to another symbol based on a previously setup circuit (which can also be altered by (name removed by moderator)utting a set of 1s and 0s ). This is why a computer can never think for itself it is essentially an extremely complicated puppet that allows extraordinarily complex movements to be controlled by extremely subtle (name removed by moderator)uts. It can imitate thinking just like a puppet, but it will always need someone with intentionality manipulating the (name removed by moderator)uts. Except in this case the (name removed by moderator)uts are electrical wires being turned off and on when keystrokes are pressed which then leads to transistors being turned off and on etc…
-Porphyry

@Anon 9:58 - I have a degree in computer engineering, and a masters in theology, with enough college philosophy and amature philosophy dabbling to be dangerous. Let me assure you that, from a computer science point of view, what Dr. Feser is saying is completely valid.

Take the example of a .jpg file. If you open it up in MS Paint, you will see a beautiful picture. If you open it up on Notepad, you will see a bunch of nonsensical characters. Obvisouly, there’s nothing in the physical state alone of the bits making up that .jpg file that determines it’s function. Only if you know it’s encoding can you properly turn the representation into a picture.

To see this, imagine you had a friend in 2013 who saved a jpg file onto punched cards and then forced you to take those punched cards back to 1970 in a time machine. Now, you take the files back to 1970 and store them on a computer. But, unfortunately, you forget to take the JPG standard in the time machine, and you don’t know the standard. Also, your friend didn’t tell you what the picture was of. The electronic state of the system would be the same in 1970 as it was in 2013. You could even say, theoretically, that the information was still there, but you would have no way of retrieving the information from the physical state of the system alone, without knowing the standard. For, the algorithm for jpgs could just have easily been implemented using a completely different set of numerical values for different pictoral patterns, and so on. In fact, let’s say that by going back to 1970 you somehow changed the flow of time so that the committee that created JPEGs did, in fact, use completely different values to implement their algorithm. Now, to top it off, you get hit by a truck and die before you can tell anyone else about the file. The physical state of your “file” is the same in 1970 as it is in 2013, but the information is lost forever. This is because there’s nothing in the physical state of the system alone that determines, apart from human interpretation, what function it performs.

 

[fisherman_carl]

The OP’s question is like asking in what way are humans like puppets. The question should be the other way around.

 

[Lost_Sheep]

A computer cannot reason.

 

[aclausen]

A computer cannot reason.

Can you define “reason” here? There are certain kinds of decision making that a computer can make that certainly resemble reasoning, if by that you mean cognition.

 

[fisherman_carl]

Can you define “reason” here? There are certain kinds of decision making that a computer can make that certainly resemble reasoning, if by that you mean cognition.

A computer doesn’t make decisions. It may simulate decision making. But, that is really smoke and mirrors. All a computer does is store and process electrical charges that we associate in our minds as binary. It doesn’t know what binary is as that is a human abstraction. It doesn’t actually know anything. And thus can not truly make a decision apart from a human mind that programs it. All the ‘thinking’ behind every computer is from a human mind. The computer does not actually think. A puppet does not actually walk.

 

[mikekle]

A computer doesn’t actually do anything like an immaterial mind. In fact it needs a human mind to do anything. Like a puppet it simply is being manipulated by a human mind. The computer stores electrical charges. That is all a computer does. It still takes a human mind to create / associate symbols with them that represent things. It takes a human mind to interpret the data displayed on the screen. It takes a human mind to write code that the computer executes. It is not even as smart as a trained monkey. It simply processes electrical charges. It is the programmer (a human mind) that is smart enough to manipulate out of it the results he wants. Again, you would not say that a puppet is the first thing humans have created that does the same thing that humans do. A puppet can appear to be walking and talking but it is just being manipulated by a human. A computer is just a more sophisticated puppet.

edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2013/10/do-machines-compute-functions.html?m=1

Yes, that is how the function right now, although eventually, I believe they will try to mimic the human brain to create some kind of artificial intelligence.

If computer technology keeps progressing at the current rate, at some point, it will surpass the human mind…try to imagine what computers will be like in 200 yrs, 500 yrs, 1000 yrs!!

 

[aclausen]

A computer doesn’t make decisions. It may simulate decision making. But, that is really smoke and mirrors. All a computer does is store and process electrical charges that we associate in our minds as binary. It doesn’t know what binary is as that is a human abstraction. It doesn’t actually know anything. And thus can not truly make a decision apart from a human mind that programs it. All the ‘thinking’ behind every computer is from a human mind. The computer does not actually think. A puppet does not actually walk.

All human decision making is based on electrochemical signals. In fact, some of the decisions we make are not even done consciously, but the supervisor part of the brain will concoct a post-hoc explanation.

The brain isn’t a digital computer, to be sure, but it is a processing system, and thus a computer, or rather a number of coordinated computational centers, some under conscious command to one extent or another, and other parts that are largely autonomic.

 

[Kurisu35712]

Other posters have said better points with better articulation than me, but if we’re being totally honest, the only reason computers are anything like humans is because we’re designing computers with our own natural processes and abilities in mind. Using a calculator to do math makes our lives easier, for sure. But at the end of the day, the calculator is simply performing the task of “doing math” for us, to save us the time of doing it ourselves.

Because math is patterns and algorithms, a computer is able to be programmed to do complex mathematics that the majority of us would be unable to do otherwise, as we wouldn’t have the training. It’s a similar concept with the other processes we’re able to do with technology.

Since it’s pertinent to what I do, I’ll use scripting and parametric modeling as an example. A computer can “see” the algorithmic patterns in a process or a script, and use (name removed by moderator)ut commands to output geometry. In simpler terms, I can, using code, tell a computer to analyze a surface, given sunlight parameters, and then optimize other surfaces to serve as a shading device that provides the maximum amount of shade. It does this by analyzing the angles produced by the light source and then drawing surfaces that interrupt those rays to effectively shade the source geometry.

But I don’t need a script to be able to do that. I can analyze the effects of the sun on the building myself by hand, or with a modeling program, or with calculus. It just takes a really long time by comparison. And at the end of the day, the program I use can do that (and a lot more), but it can’t put “soul” into a project so to speak. A building designed by the computer always lacks something, and a good architect can see the difference between good architecture and a merely efficient building. The two things are not the same.

Artificial intelligence, even at its most fantastical projections, is created using human understanding of the human mind as a template. It’s truly a soulless copy, just as a “perfect” building designed with a computer rather than designed by an architect is nothing more than a soulless building.