From The Register: Are our brains analog, or digital?.
To which I ask, what are these “analog” and “digital?” Useful approximations, both, but are they really properties that systems can have? Can we scientifically say a system is analog? Analog to me means a continuous parameter space. We can do finer and finer grain experiments, but at each step of the way, is not our best model, one which is digital? And what of digital? Do we really believe that our frothing, complicated world allows states which in discrete states, or are these discrete states but approximations, finite lifetime certainty in an uncertain world? Will we ever know a digital system is really not just a long lived analog system? Both these concepts, to me, are approximations, and debating the difference between them, seems beside the point of science. How, exactly the brain works, and how we think about the nether-land between these two extremes, now that is what I find interesting.
With severe apologies to Frost:
Some say the world is analog
Some say it’s digital
Looking through the physics catalog
I side with those who favor analog.
But if I was a little experimental
I think I know enough of science
To say that of the world digital
Is also possible
And may even be elemental .
I love your poem!