A tattered copy of Johnson's large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versifications whi...ch I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking what a charming occupation it must be to "make up" verses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One can imagine a computer simulation of the action of peptides in the hypothalamus that is accurate down to the last synapse. But... equally one can imagine a computer simulation of the oxidation of hydrocarbons in a car engine or the action of digestive processes in a stomach when it is digesting pizza. And the simulation is no more the real thing in the case of the brain than it is in the case of the car or the stomach. Barring miracles, you could not run your car by doing a computer simulation of the oxidation of gasoline, and you could not digest pizza by running the program that simulates such digestion. It seems obvious that a simulation of cognition will similarly not produce the effects of the neurobiology of cognition.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your brain receives, stores, and processes information, dispenses results, and controls your biological equipment. When properly p...rogrammed, computers can do likewise, except that they control electromechanical rather than biological equipment. Beyond these functional similarities, computers and brains have virtually nothing in common. To begin with, the electronic circuits in a computer are not analogous to brain cells. The two differ in appearance, in structure, and in principles of operation. The key functions of information storage and information processing are served in computers by physically different components. In a typical computer, one finds separate CPU and memory units; but even in computer designs where processing circuits are intermixed, the two functions remain distinct. In the brain they are not distinct; they're distributed throughout the brain and intermixed in ways that we don't understand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What, then, is the basic difference between today's computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to see ...but not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern--a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A computer does not think, it feels nothing, and what it is said to "know"--bits of information all cast in the digital mode--has ...no fringe. Nor has it a memory, only storage room. On any point called for, the answer is all or none. Vagueness, intelligent confusion, original punning on words or ideas never occur, the internal hookups being unchangeable; they were determined once for all by the true minds that made the machine and program. When plugged in, the least elaborate computer can be relied on to work to the fullest extent of its capacity; the greatest mind cannot be relied on for the simplest thing; its variability is its superiority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies. In other words, an infinite capacity to process... data (but only data--i.e. the already given) and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Query: Whether the difference between a mere computer and a man of science be not, that the one computes on principles clearly con...ceived, and by rules evidently demonstrated, whereas the other doth not?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A very simple and useful device is to have a memorandum-book, so small that it can be easily carried in the pocket, to be used ins...tead of your mind to keep note of any errand or any appointment that you may have. The Standard Diary, less than four inches long and less than two and a half inches wide, is one of the best for this purpose. ...In fact, such diaries as these, in their wide range of information, would seem to be all that one needs in practical life, the only other book that at all approaches them in this respect being unquestionably Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descended from t...hat tribe. That's what it says in the dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is--One Who Killed Our Lord.... And although there should be a statute of limitations for that crime, it seems that those who neither have the actions nor the gait of Christians, pagan or not, will bust us out, unrelenting dues, for another deuce.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »