Our Brains Have Nothing Like These 7 Things a Computer Uses to Store and Retrieve Data

It is commonly believed that when you recall something you are retrieving something stored in your brain. But none of our experiences suggest such a thing. When I retrieve an apple from my table using my hand, my body sends me two clear signals that my hand is doing the retrieval. The first is the touch sensation of my hand grasping the apple, and the second is the visual sensation of the apple in my hand. But when I retrieve a memory, my body does absolutely nothing to suggest to me that I am extracting this memory from my brain.

But our neuroscientists like to claim that our memories are stored in our brain. There is a way to test this claim. I will review each of the things that a computer uses to store and retrieve data, and in each case I will ask: is there something like that in the brain? I will use pretty much the simplest example of data storage and retrieval I can think of: the storage of a small file containing a few words of text. Below are the things that a computer uses to store and retrieve such information.

Item # 1: An Operating System

Besides applications that do specific things, a computer has what is called an operating system that does various low-level tasks. Bill Gates originally made his fortune by selling the MS-DOS operating system that was the first high-selling operating system used by personal computers. Nowadays if you have a desktop computer you may be using some Windows operating system such as Windows 10, or some Apple operating system. An operating system is a highly complex and coordinated base of code that serves as a kind of foundation for applications that are built to leverage that operating system.

As far as we know, the brain has no such thing as an operating system. There are particular genes that list the amino acid constituents of particular brain proteins, but those structural proteins are like hardware, rather than the software that is an operating system.

Item # 2: An Application to Store and Retrieve Data

While it is possible to store a small amount of data on a computer merely using a nerdy command-line string of characters, almost no one does that to store text data. Instead, 99% of the time someone will use an application to store data. An application is a program that does some specific type of work, typically by leveraging the functionality in the operating system. A person using a Windows operating system might use an application program such as Notepad, Wordpad, or Microsoft Word to store text data.

As far as we know, the brain has no such thing as application programs. No one has ever given a coherent description of how storing information to the brain would involve making use of “how to” instructions stored elsewhere in the brain, some set of instructions that could be compared to an application program.

Item # 3: The ASCII code for Encoding Information

Text is never directly written to a file stored on your computer's hard drive or a zip-drive. If, for example, you were to break apart your computer's hard drive (or break apart a small zip drive), and look at its contents in a high-magnification microscope, you would never see little tiny “a,” “b,” and “c” characters. What actually happens when your text data is stored is this: (1) the ASCII code is used to convert each of your text characters into a number; (b) those numbers are then converted from decimal into binary; (c) the binary information is then stored on your computer's hard drive or a zip drive. The ASCII code consists of a table in which each character is represented by a number.

Does the brain have anything like this? As far as we know, it does not. The ASCII code is an example of an encoding protocol, and no one has ever been able to discover any encoding protocol used by the brain to store information.

Item # 4: A Decimal to Binary Conversion Table or Utility

The ASCII code merely converts letter to decimal numbers, numbers that use the Base 10 system. But computers store information using binary code, and when binary is used, numbers are stored using the Base 2 system. So rather than directly writing text represented in the ASCII code, an application must convert from decimal to binary.

This is another encoding protocol that does not correspond to any functionality known to exist in the brain.

Item # 5: A Medium That Allows a Permanent, Stable Storage of Information

When a computer has all the bits needed to write, it must have a stable medium to write to. Some of the earliest stable media to write to were clay (used in writing cuneiform), parchment, and paper. Nowadays computers use a stable medium such as magnetic disks.

Does the brain have anything like this – some medium allowing a permanent, stable storage of information? It would seem not, at least nothing that could be used by the brain to store memories that last for years. The main assumption during the past decades has been that memories are stored in synapses. But synapses are an unstable “shifting sands” type of medium subject to high molecular turnover and structural turnover. As discussed in detail here, rapid molecular turnover in synapses should make them unsuitable for storing memories that last longer than a year. But humans are able to remember many memories for 50 years or longer. As a scientific paper puts it:

Experience-dependent behavioral memories can last a lifetime, whereas even a long-lived protein or mRNA molecule has a half-life of around 24 hrs. Thus, the constituent molecules that subserve the maintenance of a memory will have completely turned over, i.e. have been broken down and resynthesized, over the course of about 1 week. 

The DNA inside neurons is a stable medium for permanent information storage, but it doesn't seem to be used for storing our memories. Our DNA has been exhaustively studied by projects such as the Human Genome Project and the Encode project. No one has discovered the memories of any particular human in that human's DNA.

Shockingly, there seems to be no plausible candidate for a particular component in the brain where the brain could be storing memories that last for decades. Neither synapses nor DNA is such a plausible candidate.

Item # 6: A Storage Location System by Which the Exact Position of a Data Item Can be Specified, Allowing Fast Retrieval from an Exact Location

When a computer stores data on a hard drive or zip file, it's not similar to adding to a heap, something similar to pouring another cup of water in a swimming pool full of water. It's always rather like putting some new papers in a particular file of a filing cabinet. This is so that information can be retrieved rapidly. You can get papers from a file in a file cabinet quickly, but it would take you way too long to get that information if you just had some giant heap of papers in the middle of your office.

So whenever your computer stores data, it has some idea of a specific location where this data will be saved. For example, you may store your little text data in a file called SaturdayNote.txt in a folder or directory called MyTextFiles. That gives the computer a way to retrieve this information quickly, by first going to that particular folder or directory, and then searching for the file named SaturdayNote.txt file in that particular folder or directory.

Does the brain have any type of similar system for storing information in specific named locations? As far as we know, it does not. It's hard to conceive of how such a thing could possibly exist in the brain. The brain is more like a tower-sized ball of tangled spaghetti than some city with labeled streets. There seems to be no way in which a brain could ever know exactly where some data was that it was storing. Neurons don't have any coordinate system allowing anything to tell a precise location in the brain.  If your brain somehow wrote some information to a brain position of X=2345, Y=24342, Z=73252, there would be no way for the brain to record that exact position in a way that would allow that exact location to be quickly accessed. Writing some information to the brain would seem to be like writing on some index card, and throwing it into the middle of an Olympic-sized swimming pool full to the brim with index cards.  Under such a setup, instantaneous retrieval of some precise information should be impossible.

Item 7: Read/Write Functionality Allowing Data to Be Written to a Specific Location and Also Read From the Same Location

The discussion under Item #6 above was purely a discussion of an organizational system in which some data can be given a location for it to be stored. A separate requirement is that data can be written to a storage medium, and also read from that storage medium. The reading and the writing must occur in a very consistent way, so that the data read is exactly the same as the data written.

Your computer has one or more systems capable of such read/write functionality. For example, a hard disk in a computer is a read-write device. Below is a photo showing some of the rather complicated hardware involved. There is a a read-write arm which can move back and forth in a particular line, and also a spinning disk underneath that arm. At the end of the read-write arm is a read-write head that can read data when it is above some particular location. With the combination of these two things, the system can read and write from any desired location on the disk. 

Does the brain have any such read-write functionality? Some think that what is called long-term potentiation acts like a write system for storing memories. But the term long-term potentiation is very misleading. Long-term potentiation (LTP) is actually a very short-lived effect, almost always lasting less than a few weeks. The brain may have some kind of system for writing something that will last a short time, rather comparable to someone writing in the wet beach sand with his fingers. But there is no known write mechanism by which the brain could permanently store data.

When it comes to read functionality, we know of no mechanism at all for such a thing. There seems to be absolutely nothing in the brain similar to the read-write head of a hard disk, something that might allow the brain to “zoom in” and read from one particular location. A system has to be organized in a very specific way for read-write functionality to be possible, and the brain seems to be organized in no such way.

Conclusion

Our neuroscientists tend to dogmatically speak as if our memories are all stored in brains, but this is more of an ossified dogma rather than a truth determined by observations. Neuroscience itself undermines such a doctrine, by indicating that there is no stable component that the brain could be using to store memories lasting decades. Comparing the brain to a computer, we find that the brain has nothing like any of the 7 main things that the computer uses to store and retrieve data. But our minds recall obscure information instantly, and a single phrase may get you to instantly recall some old tune you have not heard in 50 years (as recently happened to me).

The discussion above should be very discouraging to anyone who hopes to explain how brains could achieve the memory capabilities of human minds. To such a person I must merely say: you're barking up the wrong tree. The feats of our minds cannot be explained solely in terms of the brain. We must postulate some psychic or spiritual component to account for the feats of our minds, something beyond the brain. Such a thing is needed to account for the wonders of psychic phenomena, and is also needed to account for the ordinary marvels of the human mind such as the instantaneous recall of childhood memories. 

Postscript: We may imagine the following conversation between a curious young boy and a distracted mother walking on the street. 

Boy: Mommy, who made the clothes I wear? And who made the TV shows I watch? And who made the cars I see? And who made the street lights?  

Mother:  The answers are simple, my son. They are: Santa Claus, Santa Claus, Santa Claus, and Santa Claus.

We can also imagine a similar conversation between a philosopher and a neuroscientist.

Philosopher: From whence comes that hint of the transcendent we feel when we look at a sky ablaze with stars?  From where do our loftiest ethical principles arise? Why do we lie awake and ponder the weightiest riddles of existence? How do we ever grasp the most abstract notions such as the idea of the universe and the eternal laws of nature?

Neuroscientist:  The answers are simple. They are: neurons, neurons, neurons, and neurons.

Such simplistic answers are convenient, but should we not suspect such complex questions have equally complex answers? 

Saying Your Mind Is Just a Computer Is Like Saying Your Smartphone Is Just a Camera

In Aeon magazine recently there is an essay by psychologist Robert Epstein with the provocative title The Empty Brain. Below the title is an equally provocative essay synopsis:

Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer.

The idea that Epstein is attacking is the doctrine of computationalism, the doctrine that the mind or brain is like a computer, and that the outputs of the mind and brain are like computations. I think Epstein is right to attack this doctrine. But the type of attack Epstein makes on computationalism isn't a terribly skillful one. Some of the points Epstein makes are rather dubious, and he neglects to make some of the best points that can be made against computationalism.

Epstein argues as follows:

Computers really do operate on symbolic representations of the world. They really store and retrieve. They really process. They really have physical memories. They really are guided in everything they do, without exception, by algorithms. Humans, on the other hand, do not – never did, never will. Given this reality, why do so many scientists talk about our mental life as if we were computers?

A small part of this reasoning could be argued through a certain line of reasoning, but not one that Epstein attempts. It can be argued that our memories are not actually stored physically in our brains, that somehow memory involves some larger unknown, on the grounds that we have no understanding of how neurons can store memories. Some of the other claims, however, seem rather dubious. Humans operate using words, and words are “symbolic representations of the world.” When we memorize facts and then recall those facts (as a student will do when studying for a test), that is a process that can reasonably be described as storing and retrieving, even though we have no idea of exactly how or where those facts are stored, and can't even be sure that they are being stored in the brain itself.

Epstein then argues at some length that humans are not information processors. This line of reasoning seems strange. Imagine you get a phone call from your friend, who tells you he is is stuck downtown because he ran out of money and doesn't have bus fare to return home. You get in your car to meet him downtown to drive him home. The phone call can surely be considered information, and your act of driving downtown as a result of that call can be considered processing the information. So why should we not think that humans are information processors? Similarly, when we simply memorize a fact, that can be considered processing a piece of information.

The best way to attack computationalism is a way that Epstein seems to overlook: look for important aspects or outputs of the human mind that are completely unlike anything produced by computers. The way to refute the “your mind is just a computer” thinkers is not to argue “the mind never computes” but to argue “the mind does so much more than just compute.” So let us ask: what outputs does the human mind have that are not produced to any extent at all by computers?

The first output I can think of is understanding. Humans have this, but computers do not. The most expensive supercomputer ever produced has never had the slightest understanding of anything. Given certain prompts, a computer can retrieve relevant information. But it understands nothing.

Let us imagine American foreign-exchange students working at a big library in China, Americans who cannot understand spoken or written Chinese. Let us suppose that people come to an information desk of the library, with questions and information requests written in Chinese on slips of paper. Imagine that the American library workers cannot understand any of the questions, but have worked out a system by which certain information sheets or books (all in Chinese) will be given to those who have certain Chinese words (or series of words) on their information request slips. This is rather how a computer works. When you do a Google search for “United States,” some computer server at Google may be able to figure out that certain information items are to be sent back to you in response to this request. But that computer has not the slightest understanding of any of these information items, nor does it have the slightest understanding of what the United States is.

And so it basically is for all computer processing. Every single time you ask a computer for information, it is completely lacking in understanding of what you asked and what the outputs are that it gave back to you. When you ask your computer what was the birth date of President Abraham Lincoln, it may very quickly respond: February 12, 1809. But your computer has not the slightest understanding of what a president is, what a birth date is, what any date is, who Abraham Lincoln was, or what a person is. What you see in this case is a correlation between a fact and the computer response. But we should not confuse a correlation with cognition.

Computers have not an iota of understanding. This is one major reason why we should not be comparing the human mind to a computer. Another gigantic reason is that probably the essential output of the human mind is what we might variously call consciousness, experience, or life-flow: a stream of experiences of the type someone has when that person is consciously living a particular day. We can define life-flow as the stream of thoughts, feelings, and sensations that go on while you are awake, but which temporarily stop while you are sleeping. Such life-flow is the most essential output of the human mind. But computers have no such output. No computer has ever had the slightest bit of life-flow. It's futile to try to ask ourselves what it is like to be a computer, because computers have not the slightest bit of life-flow.

So because it provides understanding and life-flow (also called experience), the human mind is something vastly more than just a computer (which has no such things as its output). Calling the human mind or brain a computer is like calling your smartphone a camera. Your smartphone includes a not-very-good camera, but it has vastly more (also allowing you to call people, run apps, play games, and browse the internet). Similarly it's rather as if the human mind has a not-very-good computer inside it, but its main outputs are things (understanding and life-flow) that are totally different from computer outputs.

Although Epstein seems to err in trying to completely deny a computation aspect of the human mind, he is correct in suggesting the futility of all attempts to explain the human mind in a mechanical kind of way.

Why You Won't See an Age of Spiritual Machines

According to the computationalism theory of the human mind, the mind is like a computer, and one day we will be able to develop computers that produce outputs just like human consciousness. Such a theory is assumed by most proponents of the Singularity, the idea that there will before long be an “intelligence explosion” which results in machines with intelligence far beyond our own. Such proponents write books with titles such as The Age of Spiritual Machines. Such theorists usually don't tell us that they are advancing the computationalism theory of the human mind. They usually just pronounce the dubious ideas of such a theory as if such ideas were self-evident.

But the computationalism theory of the human mind is not valid. To explain why, let us look into what happens when computers compute. The following equation covers most of the types of computation that occur.

digital inputs + processing = digital outputs or modification of digital data

There are various types of variations of this equation. One is simply:

no inputs + processing = digital outputs or modification of digital data

Another variation is the following:

digital inputs + processing + retrieval of other digital inputs = digital outputs or modification of digital data

By digital inputs or digital outputs I mean anything at all that can be represented digitally, by a sequence of binary numbers. Here are some of the things that we know can be represented digitally, and which modern computers do use as digital inputs or digital outputs:

Any number

Any set of characters or words

Images

Videos

Databases

To the computer, that pretty gal is just a series of 1's and 0's

Any text can be digitally represented by means of things such as the ASCII system that allows you to represent particular characters as particular numbers. While we don't normally think of an image as digital, it can be represented digitally as a series of pixels or picture elements. For example, a photograph might consist of 1 million pixels, which each can be represented by a number representing a particular shade of color. So the image can be digitally represented by a million such numbers. A video can also be representing digitally, since the video can be represented as a series of images, each of which can be digitally represented.

But there are two things that we can never hope to produce as digital outputs. The first is real conceptual understanding, and the second is experience. By understanding I don't mean “how-to” type understanding, but the high-level conscious understanding of some abstract truth or concept. By experience I mean an actual human experience, such as the life-flow you experience during an hour of your life.

We can imagine no possible way to produce a digital output that would equal a real conceptual understanding of something. Nor can we imagine any possible way to produce a digital output that would equal something like a human experience.

Imagine a conversation like this 200 years from now between a programming supervisor and a programmer who has been doing his job for over a century (thanks to the marvel of life-extension pills).

Boss: Well, I've got an interesting new assignment for you. I want you to compute an interesting new output.

Programmer: This should be a breeze. I've already done functions that compute 12,000 different text outputs, 15,000 different numerical outputs, 25,000 different image outputs, and 4000 different video outputs.

Boss: This time I want the computer to produce waterfalls and Swiss cheese. Not just pictures, but the real things.

Programmer: Are you crazy?

There might be a similar conversation if the boss asked the programmer to produce understanding or experience as the outputs. Just as waterfalls and Swiss cheese are not digital outputs, real conceptual understanding and experience (a slice of life-flow) are not digital outputs. You can make outputs that might mimic some understanding someone might have, but you cannot produce real conceptual understanding as a digital output. You can make outputs that might mimic some sight someone might see while having an experience, but you cannot produce actual experience (a slice of life-flow) as a digital output. 

But, you may ask, doesn't that smart computer Watson already understand something – the game of chess? No, it doesn't. Watson merely can produce a digital output corresponding to a good move to make as the next move in a chess game. Watson has zero conceptual understanding of the game of chess itself, and has zero understanding of the abstract concept of a game. The only way you can understand the abstract concept of a game (or the abstract concept of leisure) is if you have been a human being (or something like a human), and played a game yourself. 

A digital output must always boil down to a series of 1's and 0's. Can we imagine a series of 1's and 0's that would equal a real understanding of an abstract concept such as health, matter, life or world peace? No, we cannot. 

Because conceptual understanding is not a digital output, we should not think that predictions such as the following recent prediction are correct:

The third thing you can expect before the year 2100 is the development of generalized artificial intelligence (GAI). In other words, machines that don't just play games like chess or Jeopardy, but can do the thinking required for any white-collar job, including all the ones at the top.

Such a prediction is based on the idea that future computers will be able to produce conceptual understanding as an output. They won't, because real understanding of abstract concepts is not a possible digital output, and digital computers will only be able to produce digital outputs. 

Postscript:  Digital computers translate inputs into digital content, and translate outputs into content that may not seem digital. For example, a compiler translates English-like computer code into digital inputs a computer can understand, while a purely digital output may be translated into something that doesn't look digital. But at the lowest level inside the computer, it's all digital.