If we were to try to compare an average brain to a modern PC, how would they stack up? Is it possible to compare the two systems at all?
I’m thinking it should be relatively straightforward to figure out how many meg/gig/whatever of memory we have … what about CPU speed? RAM? (=short term memory?)
In other words, do computers have the hardware to be as smart as us yet?
Someonw will be along, but we’re nowhere remotely close to the complexity of a dog’s brain, let alone humans.
Dogs! Dogs’ brains are pretty close to our own, when you consider the full spectrum of brains to be found in the universe.
What we know about brains in general is that they function very, very differently from computers and any comparisons between the two are pretty meaningless. Especially because we know how computers work, but we don’t really understand brains all that well.
software-wise, yeah certainly … but how about hardware? How many nerons does a dog’s brain have, anyway?
Not even remotely straightforward. Consider how humans store images, for instance, compared to computers. At its most straightforward, a computer will store an image by storing the color value of each individual pixel (this might be a BMP image, for instance). If you get a little more sophisticated, you might look for some simple patterns in the pixel values, and store those patterns, giving you something like a JPEG or a GIF. But you’re still ultimately dealing with the values of individual pixels.
Now consider how humans store images. They’re all constructed from templates. For instance, I have a memory of seeing my dad tucking me in as I went to bed one night, when I was very young. How is that image stored? Well, I remember that Dad was in it. OK, start with the mental template I have of “human being”. Modify that template for “male human being”. Adjust that template until it’s 6’2" tall and 225 pounds. Dig up template for “beard”, and apply it to the human template I’m using. Pose that human template in a certain position. Color skin a pinkish shade, and color hair dark brown. Place this human in my bedroom… That’s a special case of my template for “room”, with the door in a particular place, and windows on the opposite wall, and a certain set of furniture (for which there are also templates).
There are advantages and disadvantages to storing images in this manner, as opposed to pixel-by-pixel like a computer. For one thing, I can store a great many images of familiar scenes in memory, because familiar scenes will contain a great many objects for which I have mental templates. And I can easily judge when two images are of similar scenes, because they’ll contain many of the same templates. And more important parts of images will be stored in greater detail.
On the other hand, the human brain is lousy at storing images which don’t contain common templates. Show me a Jackson Pollack painting, and I probably won’t be able to tell you if I’ve seen that particular painting before. About the only template I can associate with it is “splatters of color”, which appplies pretty much equally to all of his paintings. As far as my memory’s concerned, they’re all identical. The human memory storage system is also easily deceived: I can easily construct a detailed memory of something that never happened. I have a detailed mental model of my sister, for instance, and I have a detailed model of my apartment, and it would be very easy to picture my sister in my apartment, even though she’s never been within 500 miles of it. And the human method of memory storage is also bad at details we deem irrelevant. In the example I gave of my father, for instance, you’ll notice that I didn’t mention what clothes he was wearing. That’s because I don’t remember. Not, mind you, that I remember him naked, just that I don’t remember any particular clothes. Probably, he was wearing a flannel shirt, since he usually wears flannels… But what color? And even the flannel part isn’t a memory, but a reconstruction.
To give yet another example, you know what a penny looks like, right? That’s an image you have stored somewhere. So answer me this: Is Lincoln facing left or right? If you don’t know that, then maybe you don’t really have that image stored, after all.
Depends if it’s heads or tails. 