Anomalous Presumptions

Unfortunately I think the idea of brains / minds “computing” (as typically discussed) is an example of type thinking. Certainly people do something that is functionally equivalent to what we normally call computing in many situations. More generally, people (and animals, and even plants and bacteria) process information in the Shannon sense (i.e. not discrete symbols but negative entropy). But the mechanisms are based on interactions within populations (of cells, especially nerve cells) and can’t be understood beyond a certain point without taking that into account.

I’ve been reading an interesting (and relatively accessible) book on cellular information processing called The Touchstone of Life, by Loewenstein. It is entirely about how information is managed (at the molecular level) in cells, and it certainly could be seen as describing computation. However it demonstrates a completely different way of thinking about information processing than our typical algebraic / logical models, so it is a good corrective for those of us (and I certainly include myself) who’ve had way too much practice with algebraic style computation.

Filed by Jed at 3:39 pm under Population thinking
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