Thanks Joel.. and "Does the computer "think"..?

[Joel Rees]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 8:00 AM, Linda McLeod <lindavaldeen at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> Much Thanks Dear Joel..

Erk.

> I am researching your great advice dude..

That's nice to know.

> The data I need to protect, is the new sciences I saw in the Bigfoot
> collective, [...]

No computer technology available to handle that one. Sorry.

Just use ordinary care, since nothing more will come close to doing the job.

> _______________________
>
>
> New topic:  Does the computer "think"..?

Yes, but not in the ways humans do.

> [...]
> In my working with computers, for a couple decades, there have been
> times the computer seemed to actually "think out" its problems, and
> solve them, more than just "juggling 1's and 0's"..

Sometimes random calculation is confused with thinking.

And sometimes limits on the programmed algebrae force the calculations
back to paths which stabilize themselves in ways that appear coherent
to us (and may even stay stable long enough for us to reboot the
system).

> I know it's just
> based on 1's and 0's, off's and on's.. but isn't that how the human
> brain works too..?

No. Binary logic is not natural to most of the human brain, nor to the
mind. It's something we have to coerce or train, although it also
turns out to be a failure mode in some of our cognitive pathways.

> and how the brain thinks in processing thought..?
> But most don't think because they just can't, or they once used the
> mind, and it frightened them, so now they boycott thinking, and prefer
> to create and run habits right to the end...
> Isn't the computer based on how the human brain works..?

No. See above. The computer is based on much simpler math than how our
brains work.

> [...]
> Look at how Fedora repairs itself...

See above about random calculation.

> [...]
> Ask yourself..  "Where does new science come from..?"..
> [...]

In order for us to converse coherently with each other on technical
topics here, we have all agreed not to talk about God (in other words,
the ultimate cause, and other such aspects thereof) here, but to do so
in other forums. Were God to provide us with a general, complete spec
sheet for the human mind, that would still be off-topic here because
Fedora and the hardware it runs on are much, much more restricted.

I'd point you to my blog, but I think you probably want to focus on
Shneier's work on secure systems for a while.