“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.”

— Norbert Wiener, book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

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 Wiener36

American mathematician 1894–1964

Related quotes

“[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.

“So far as cerebral structure goes… it is clear that Man differs less from the Chimpanzee or the Orang, than these do even from the Monkeys, and that the difference between the brains of the Chimpanzee and of Man is almost insignificant, when compared with that between the Chimpanzee brain and that of a Lemur.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 120

“The machine is supplied with a "tape" (the analogue of paper) running through it, and divided into sections (called "squares") each capable of bearing a "symbol."”

Alan Turing Computable Numbers

On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (1936)

“Often people, especially computer engineers, focus on the machines. They think, "By doing this, the machine will run faster. By doing this, the machine will run more effectively. By doing this, the machine will something something something." They are focusing on machines. But in fact we need to focus on humans, on how humans care about doing programming or operating the application of the machines. We are the masters. They are the slaves.”

Yukihiro Matsumoto (1965) Japanese computer scientist

Yukihiro Matsumoto " The Philosophy of Ruby, A Conversation with Yukihiro Matsumoto, Part I http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby4.html" by Bill Venners on 2003-09-29 (Artima Developer).

“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.

“The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Benway
Naked Lunch (1959)

“There is one aspect of our own mentality for which it's difficult as yet to foresee what type of explanation would even be relevant. I'm referring, of course, to consciousness. The point is that although I have no reason to believe that my consciousness is implemented by anything other than my brain, I remain convinced that there's something impenetrably mysterious about the relationship between brains and thoughts. And you can understand, therefore, why it's so hard to imagine, let alone tolerate, the idea that the death of the brain necessarily leads to the end of the personal self – and this, of course, is the "trump card" with which religion has consistently played.”

Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) British theatre director (born 1934)

Episode three: "The Final Hour".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

“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.

“It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

Source: The Human Use of Human Beings (1950), p. 16

“[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<br>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 <br class="br">Disputed

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Norbert Wiener36

Related quotes

Related topics