Computers vs. Brains
Though we often equate our brains with computers, there are vast differences in structure, function, and capability. There really is no comparison.
Computers did not evolve on their own. They are not driven to exist. Just like any other tool since our beginnings, computers were designed by humans as tools to give us an advantage in present and future circumstances. If our lives depended on computers to maintain our physical functions, we would not be here. For the vicissitudes of life, computers are yet quite ill-adapted.
While computers are very efficient and very reliable at working computations where the inputs lead to outputs based on certain rules or heuristics, they are not very good at looking at unfamiliar situations, and coming up with new explanations, or rewriting their own programming to cope with external change.
Brains are a Quantum Mechanical Device
Our neurology (including our brain) is a holographic substrate created from the stuff of the physical universe, yet organized to interact with that universe at the quantum level. On this marvelous holographic substrate is scribed information about the universe, which is organized and reflected back at the universe in billions of neural firings every second.
Our neurological system originated from the same stem cells that created our skin, eyes, ears, noses and tongues. The outer sensory organs are originally extensions of the brain, and the mind-body energized by emotions forms a complete cybernetic system, capable of surviving and re-producing in the world.
Our brains were shaped by eons of evolution, in a world where the problems of survival as individuals, as a species, and later as cultures were and continue to be a constant sculpting force. Survive and propagate, or die. In this setting, the brain emerged as a superb recognizer and generator of patterns in the realms of space and time, and energy and material use. To survive and propagate, our brains operate at, and shift between and among many complex levels of abstraction, which invent and reinvent themselves as the environment changes.
We are perceivers in a quantum universe... cartographers on a journey to survey and map out this strange universe. The more we map it, the stranger it gets.
