Architecturally they are very similar. Raw computational processing power will overtake human brains within two decades - that is without any fundamental advances.

You should give this book a read if you care - it is a very quick, easy read and and it answers a lot of your questions.... and more!

Some brains operate with a lot more hurts than others don't they ?

I think you are quite far off the mark claiming the brain is nearly limitless and unnumbered. Why can't I remember my anniversary, or find my keys? Why is it SOOO hard to learn a foreign language? Riddle me that.

A lot of the capability you talk about is in effect software, not a capability of the substrate (meat vs silicon). Software IMO will take a LOOONG time to catch up - 5 to 10 decades? Who knows.

Humans had just enough intelligence to build thinking machines - what happens when the thinking machines supercede us? What kind of intelligence will the machines choose to build??? Enhanced humans? Super robots? Computers the size of entire worlds?

When it comes to relationships, I prefer flesh to chips.

There you go.

computer advantages:

no "mistakes", computation wise
never bored
perfect memory
one can be made the same as another
takes a few hours to make/buy a computer. you think making a human is hard? try buying one in america!

If you look the complexity of a computer and the complexity of a human brain, you will realise that the brain is a much more complex system that CPU. Actually if you think about it we can understand and build CPU but we can't understand how our our brain works.

Now if you realise their respective abilities, CPU can repeat simple operations extremely quickly thing that would be hardly done by any human. However, man can do thing that computer can't acees (until when?) such as thinking in concept, creating art, .... The limit will be can a calculator start to think?

I don't know....but I don't feel threatened by the complex of Frankeinstein... (not yet...!?)

Thank you PoetPhilosopher!

Very good information. I do agree with many of your statements. There are a several things not mentioned that help answer a few of your questions. For one, human imperfection. This is something that we all have to face. Interestingly enough, everyone responds differently in there one single area. Imperfections in the way we think, act, grow effect ultimately everything we do. Granted, my perspective waved imperfection off as "what if we were perfect". Still, some are better at memory then others still.

Of course, even the best minds of history we're still operating under this one fact. Interesting statement, none the less.

My brother-in-law has that book you mentioned. I may just barrow it from him.

First of all, i can take a good guess of why it's hard to learn another language. Language is taught from birth, and it is taught as an absolute. In fact our entire process for learning other things, is based around the very concept of language. So in a way, learning another language sort of re-difines your known way to express.....EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER LEARNED. I'm no expert this is just a philosphical idea.

As far as what computers do better than brains....I'd say it's as simple as one word: Definition. Or more corectly: To Define

Our brains are not just CPU's they are the most incredible reltional database of all. From the moment you're born they start storing, cataloging, and cross-referencing everything you experience. In fact, as you go on in life they also cross-reference things with the cross-references that were already made, and then cataloging those cross-references, etc etc explonetially.

Our brains function that way in order to have predictive intelligence.(or more precisely, we have predictive intelligence BECAUSE our brains function that way) So for instance when you're a young child and learning how to do something simple like "jumping", at first all you do is jump. Then you measure how far you can jump, not with a ruler always, but perhaps something like "I can jump from the edge of the couch to the middle of the second cushion". Eventually you stop even measuring and simply KNOW how far you can jump because of the above foremetioned cross-references. You can judge based on what your brain has stored in your subconcious, but at the same time you usually cannot say exactly how far you can jump. You cant recall the fact of the jump in a hard term.

In that way computers assist us in the way that we are NOT good at....facts and definitions.

Poet, it does have a nearly infinite capacity for storage. The problem we run into is not storage but organization; few people are able to organise their thoughts to the point where short term memory is accessible in the long term.

~Dan

Dan - if you consider a single human brain's storage capacity "nearly infinite", you either have a very weak definition of nearly, or infinite. Heheh.

I googled this answer in about 35 seconds:

The brain contains 10^11 neurons -- in other words, 100 giganeurons. Each one has synapses connecting it to up to 1000 other neurons. Many researchers believe that memories are stored as patterns of synapse strengths. If we suppose that the strength of each synapse can take on any of 256 values, then each synapse corresponds to a byte of memory. This gives a total of (very
roughly) 100 terabytes for the brain.

For more info, see the book "Mind and Brain: Readings from Scientific American".

News release Oct 03:

The new SGI Origin 3900, built by Silicon Graphics, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., is the largest such computer in the world, with a computing environment of 2,048 processors, two terabytes of memory and 40 terabytes of disk storage, said Steve Worums, high computing division director here.

So... we are close today. Scary huh?

Where can I order one

Our brain does not store data as inefficiently as a computer does. Additionally our brain is both the storage and the CPU combined into one function. If you think WinRAR is good at compression, imagine what your brain can do.

i cant even start on my list...