On Mon, 4 Aug 2003 15:05:29 +0000 (UTC), "FuzionMan"
 wrote:

>OK, so right now a few of you are thinking "where did this fellow
come from"
>
>Well, I was just giving some thought to this...
>What if we are all computers (humans, animals, etc) and don't even know it??
>I mean if you think about it....
>What we have in common with computers:
>we process
>we have memory
>we store long term info
>we need energy to run
>we can only operate through a certain temperature range (if you look at many
>electronics' specs, they usually have an temp range at which they should
>only be used/stored in)
>we can remember/store images of what we see
>our eyes use optics to connect to our brains
>we have to calculate everything we do for body movements
>signals travel through nerves and spinal cord
>
>Things that we don't have in common (yet):
>computers can't make decisions yet (although I heard on Television just
>recently about scientists incorporating DNA into computers, and will be able
>to make simple decisions...or/and learn........ but don't know much about it
>yet)
>Computers are a bunch of silicon & wires put together, we are carbon
>based....
>
>Perhaps computers created our DNA?  Maybe we are the advanced computers?
>
>I really don't mean to sound strange, but we all have strange imaginations
>(especially my young self)....  Thanks...
>

Not so dumb a question at all. However, it is also not so new a
question.  In 1946, McCulloch and Pitts wrote a paper:
  McCulloch, W. S. and Pitts, W. H. (1943). 
  A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity. 
  Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 5:115-133. 

This paper described how relatively simjple "neurons" could do logical
calculations.  It was written before the first general purpose
computer was built!  It was important in influencing the notion of
computers and computability, the development of the theories of
cybernetics, and the development of computers in general.

The field of Cybernetics, in particular: Norbert Weiner's 1948 book
   "Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the
Machine" is specifically about information and control emphasizing the
similarity in biological and computation or engineering systems.

So the parallels you point out were very important in starting the
whole concept of computation, cybernetics, information theory, etc.
However,  there are also a lot of very superficial similarities, not
to mention outright errors, in your list.

Yes there are aspects of us that act like computational elements, like
information processing elements, like regulatory and control elements.
The subject matter of physiology spends a lot of time on issues of
information signaling, control, and regulation.  We can certainly
function like computers.  But that is not to say that we ARE
computers, or that the computer aspect of us is the only part that
matters!
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