Furthermore, the brain is massively parallel, and has a specialized architecture. For what it does, it’s well optimized, at least compared to how optimized our software and hardware are for similar tasks at this point. For instance, laptop processors are general purpose processors, being able to do many different tasks they aren’t really fast or good at any.
Intuitively this doesn’t seem right at all: I can think of plenty of things that a human plus an external memory aid (like a pencil + paper) can do that a laptop can’t, but (aside from dumb hardware stuff like “connect to the internet” and so on) I can’t think of anything for which the reverse is true; while I can think of plenty of things that they both can do, but a laptop can do much faster. Or am I misinterpreting you?
The human brain might be seen as a generalist, but not in the same way a laptop computer processor is.
Besides, even a laptop processor has certain specializations and advantages over the human brain in certain narrow domains, like for instance among others, number crunching and fast arithmetic operations.
Intuitively this doesn’t seem right at all: I can think of plenty of things that a human plus an external memory aid (like a pencil + paper) can do that a laptop can’t, but (aside from dumb hardware stuff like “connect to the internet” and so on) I can’t think of anything for which the reverse is true; while I can think of plenty of things that they both can do, but a laptop can do much faster. Or am I misinterpreting you?
I’m not sure I understand your question.
I guess part of my point is that a laptop processor is a very general purpose tool, while the human brain is a collection of specialized modules. Also, the more general a tool is, the less efficient it will be on average for any task.
The human brain might be seen as a generalist, but not in the same way a laptop computer processor is.
Besides, even a laptop processor has certain specializations and advantages over the human brain in certain narrow domains, like for instance among others, number crunching and fast arithmetic operations.