“Let it be remarked … that an important difference between the way in which we use the brain and the machine is that the machine is intended for many successive runs, either with no reference to each other, or with a minimal, limited reference, and that it can be cleared between such runs; while the brain, in the course of nature, never even approximately clears out its past records. Thus the brain, under normal circumstances, is not the complete analogue of the computing machine but rather the analogue of a single run on such a machine. We shall see later that this remark has a deep significance in psychopathology and in psychiatry.”

V. Computing Machines and the Nervous System. p. 121.
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Let it be remarked … that an important difference between the way in which we use the brain and the machine is that the…" by Norbert Wiener?
Norbert Wiener photo
Norbert Wiener 36
American mathematician 1894–1964

Related quotes

Grace Hopper photo

“[The Computer] was the first machine man built that assisted the power of his brain instead of the strength of his arm.”

Grace Hopper (1906–1992) American computer scientist and United States Navy officer

As spoken at Space Coast 1987 speaking about the Harvard Mark I computer. The Computer was originally She in reference to the Mark I.

Thomas Henry Huxley photo
Alan Turing photo
Yukihiro Matsumoto photo

“To understand the relationship between behavior and brain one has to begin by defining the function, or computational goal, of a complete behavior. Only then can a neuroscientist determine how the brain achieves that goal.”

David Marr (1945–1980) British neuroscientist and psychologist

Source: Paul W. Glimcher (2004). Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain.

William S. Burroughs photo
Jonathan Miller photo

“Machine consciousness refers to attempts by those who design and analyse informational machines to apply their methods to various ways of understanding consciousness and to examine the possible role of consciousness in informational machines.”

Igor Aleksander (1937) scientist

Igor Aleksander (2008) " Machine consciousness http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Machine_consciousness" in: Scholarpedia, 3(2):4162.

Norbert Wiener photo
Benjamin Graham photo

“[Shorter variant:] In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Quoted and attributed to Graham in Warren Buffett's 1993 letter to investors. https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1993.html
The statement is not found in any of Graham's publications or lecture transcripts, and when asked, Buffett could not provide a reference. https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=77840
Disputed

Related topics