🚀 go-pugleaf

Neil Rickert (rickert@cs.niu.edu) wrote:
: In <37kln5$nh3@portal.gmu.edu> herwin@vanish (Harry Erwin) writes:

: >I'm new to this aspect of the field, and I think I got it garbled. In
: >order to get around a digital model of the brain using PDE integration
: >techniques, I need arbitrarily small significant features.

: The whole idea that the brain is doing something that requires
: integrating PDEs seems very unlikely to me.  The brain is made of
: biological cells, and cells do not have the high precision where the
: boundedness of 4th derivatives would have any particular relevance.

: Personally, I tend to doubt any argument which tries to make anything
: important out of a difference between digital and analog.  It is
: worth remembering that movie theaters have long been delivering
: discrete shows, with the picture image switching 24 times per second,
: and except for the occasional backward turning wagon wheels, it all
: looks continuous to us.  This should caution us that arguments about
: the importance of analog components are bogus.

Discrete in time, but continuous in space, and with active processes
using stochastic resonance to produce hyperacuity. 

If the arguments about analog components are bogus, the Strong AI
theorists win. Doesn't bother me, but it bugs the hell out of some
people I have to get along with.


--
Harry Erwin
Internet: herwin@gmu.edu 
Just a dumb graduate student working on Katchalsky network models....
(And if you believe that, I have a ranch in California to sell you.)