Post #2022509

2026-05-03 08:27 UTC

Brains aren’t impressive because of their compute (which is both immense and absurdly efficient) or their ability to predict the future (technically the main function of evolved minds). They’re impressive because they’re conscious. The fact that organic brains can **also** engage in hierarchical abstraction, which no digital computer (or Turing machine) can do by definition, is icing on the cake. (The halting problem and Godel’s incompleteness and Traski’s undefinability theorems all seem to suggest that analog, not digital computation is more likely to be involved in consciousness, if at all.)

Replies (4)

@psycotica0@lemmy.ca 2026-05-03 12:31

You're going to have to do a lot more to justify the leap from Godel's Incompleteness and the Halting Problem to "digital is limited, analog is not", because neither of those things have anything to do with digital processes at all, and in fact both came about before we'd *invented* digital computers. To me this comment sounds like when popsci gets ahold of a few sciency words and suddenly decides everything is crystal vibrations universal harmonics string theory quantum tunneling aligning resonance with those around you.

Open ##2022511
@turdas@suppo.fi 2026-05-03 11:07

I don't see why there would be any fundamental difference between analog and digital computing. Digital computers can emulate analog computing, and I doubt consciousness arises from having theoretically infinite decimal precision, because in practice analog systems cannot use infinite precision either. Analogs (heh!) of the halting problem and the theorems you mention also exist for analog computing. Quantum effects in the brain are a slightly more plausible explanation for consciousness, but currently they teeter on magical thinking because we don't really know anything about what they would actually do in the brain. It becomes an "a wizard did it" explanation. So in the end, we just don't know.

Open ##2022512
@SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 2026-05-03 13:06

> (The halting problem and Godel’s incompleteness and Traski’s undefinability theorems all seem to suggest that analog, not digital computing is responsible for consciousness.) I hear that argument from time to time, and I never found a source for it. I want to understand the original claim. Because it doesn't make any sense when people bring it up. because both theorems do not have anything to do with the areas it's applied to. I understand why people think it does, but it just doesn't

Open ##2022513
@FaceDeer@fedia.io 2026-05-03 08:30

I'm still awaiting a widely accepted method of actually *measuring* "consciousness." It's a conveniently nebulous property. And simply defining it as something computers can't do is even more convenient.

Open ##2022514