Re: The guy who stopped Go Programming Development ...

Frank de Groot wrote:
"Lawson English" <LEnglish5@xxxxxxx> wrote

And I just pointed out that the normal definition of analog is shorthand for "lots and lots of values."

Being a digital electronics engineer by education, I can tell you that a neuron is a "gate" (like an AND gate) but instead of looking at the signal level, the gate is looking at the duty cycle of the digital pulses.

Sigh.

The "digital" signal you speak of passes down the axon to the axonic terminals where it is distributed to many other neurons. These other neurons in turn, receive signals from as many as a thousand different neurons, more or less asynchronously. The signals are often/usually passed from one neuron to the next in the form of molecules called neurotransmitters.

The signal that is *triggered* is digital in the sense that it is discrete and occurs at a maximum frequency. However, it takes a finite and indeterminate amount of time for the the accumulation of sufficient neurotransmitters to trigger the next signal. If the signal hasn't triggered recently, a smaller number of molecules is required to trigger the signal than if it triggered more recently. No matter how many molecules are released by the signaling neurons, the receptor neuron will not trigger sooner than the time dictated by its maximum rate.

the incoming signal consists of the accumulation of thousands, probably millions of molecules. The number required is dependent on the current state of the target neuron--how recently it last fired.

The incoming signal can range in strength through some large number of states: some large range that isn't measurable as far as I know. The output signal can range in value from 0 to perhaps 100 pulses per second.

Perhaps 0 to 100 counts as "digital" in your book, but some unknown "large number of states" certainly qualifies as analog, on the input side.






So for all practical purposes, when professionals like myself consider the brain, it's "digital".

There are NO "lots and lots of values" involved - the signal is DIGITAL - either a 0 or a 1.


Sigh.

The duty cycle of the pulse train is what you call "lots and lots of values", or the number of digital inputs is what you call "lots and lots of values".

This is wrong:

- The signals that travel in the brain are only ZERO or ONE, there is a pulse or there is no pulse.

- A neuron gives off either a pulse, or no pulse, and those pulses are always of the same strength.

So the brain is a fully digital machine, the only difference with a bunch of TTL/CMOS gates is that instead of being "clocked", it's running asynchronously and instead of differentaiting the input signals, they are integrated.

And the values they integrate number in the thousands or even millions.
.

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