September
10, 2017 Sunday
Bedtime
Stories
Human Brain and Machines
Tonight
I begin by quoting an excerpt from the chapter titled “How universal are Turing
Machines?” written by Daniel Hillis.
“Some
mathematicians and philosophers have ascribed almost mystical properties to Gödel’s
incompleteness theorem.
A
few believe that the theorem proves that human intuition somehow surpasses the
power of computer – that human beings may be able to “intuit” truths that are
impossible for machines to prove or disprove.
This
is an emotionally appealing argument, and it is sometimes seized upon by
philosophers who don’t like being compared to computers.
But
the argument is fallacious.
Whether
or not people can successfully make intuitive leaps that cannot be made by
computers, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem provides no reason to believe that
there are mathematical statements that can be proved by a mathematician but
can’t be proved by a computer.
As
far as we know, any theorem that can be proved by a human being can also be
proved by a computer.
Humans
cannot compute noncomputable problems any more than computers can.”
Note
mon ami the quotation mark has ended here.
Computer
science is one of those few scientific disciplines in our journey of knowledge
and self-discovery that has shown us our rightful place that we are no special
in spite of all the appearance of being so.
The
other two sciences which had a similar affect on us humans were the astronomy
and evolutionary biology.
There
is one more part from the same chapter I would like to quote though in spite of
having less direct bearing on our present chain of thought it would not be
completely irrelevant or inappropriate.
Even
if it had no bearing to our story, it would still be worth digressing for
reading something as beautiful as this.
“This
leads us back to the philosophical issues touched on at the beginning of the
chapter – that is, the relationship between the computer and the human brain.
It
is certainly conceivable, as at least one well-known physicist has speculated
(to hoots from most of his colleagues), that the human brain takes advantages
of the quantum mechanical effects.
Yet
there is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case.
Certainly,
the physics of a neuron depends upon quantum mechanics, just as the physics of
a transistor does, but there is no evidence that neural processing takes place
at the quantum mechanical level as opposed to the classical level; that is,
there is no evidence that quantum mechanics is necessary to explain human
thought.
As
far as we know, all the relevant computational properties of a neuron can be
simulated on a conventional computer.
If
this is indeed the case, then it is also possible to simulate a network of tens
of billions of such neurons, which means, in turn, the brain can be simulated
on a universal machine.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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