February 24, 2005

Computers in the human body ???

A question : how many of you believe that the brain is the computer in the human body?

There was a TPP competition in our college as a part of an intra-college fest. One of the entries was on DNA computing (which eventually won the first place). One of the team members, during the presentation, made a statement which went something like "... the DNA molecules in the human body are nothing but computers ...".

The guy sitting next to me got pissed at this. According to him, we statements like "the brain is the human computer" are utter nonsense. The computer is an attempted imitation of the human brain. And a very poor one at that.

Hmm. Will make me think the next time I am comparing the two.

2 comments:

Pascal said...

I would say they both are equally wrong. You cannot compare two entities both of which have entirely different mechanims of working. Computers are not a poor simulation of the marvelous human mind. The human mind cannot process data as fast as a computer. Computers cannot match the ingenuity of the human mind. Both the entities presented in this case are have different advantages and disadvantages and must be used accordingly.

Sandesh Singh said...

Yes, you cannot compare the two entities. Exactly the reason to get pissed.

Also, I forgot to mention that AI came up in the seminar, and the presenters were very supportive of the idea that the advent of DNA computing would make AI a reality.

You can't deny the fact that the two invariably end up being compared to each other ... no one cares for strict definitions. Also, I don't agree that computers can process data faster than the human mind ... we haven't yet been able to comprehend how much data we "prcess" to recognise people, identify fragrances, taste, etc. What you term as "ingenuity", may very well be calculations.