What’s a common “fact” that’s spread around that’s actually not true and pisses you off that too many people believe it?

  • disregardable@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    21 days ago

    Almost like saying “thinking is what brains do.”

    That’s not wrong to say though, because it’s true. Thought is a function of a brain. There’s no mechanism for non-brains to think. I think you’re confusing computation for thought. Computation can result in a product that looks like it came from thought, but computation itself fundamentally has nothing in common with thought. It’s not a spontaneous, creative response to the stimuli we experience in the world. There is no process of meaning-making. There can’t be, because it has no mechanism to understand what it’s responding to.

    • Iconoclast@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      21 days ago

      Brains are made of matter that obeys the laws of physics. I don’t see why that same function couldn’t be performed in silicon. I wouldn’t say our current systems can think in the sense that people understand the term, but I see no reason to assume they couldn’t in the future - or that thinking is reserved only for wet meat computers.

      • disregardable@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        21 days ago

        I don’t really see how you could make a brain out of silicone, because thought a product of cells. The cells send signals to each other, and that’s how you get thought. You could maybe grow a brain in a lab, but I don’t see how a plastic replication would work. And even if you did grow one in a lab, who knows how not being connected to a body would impact its ability to develop thought.

        • hexagonwin@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          21 days ago

          well theoretically with a computer powerful enough, one can simulate all the brain cells and effectively emulate the whole brain