{"id":1013,"date":"2005-08-11T16:23:08","date_gmt":"2005-08-11T23:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=1013"},"modified":"2005-08-11T16:23:08","modified_gmt":"2005-08-11T23:23:08","slug":"neither-an-analog-guy-in-a-digital-world-nor-a-digial-guy-in-an-analog-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2005\/08\/11\/neither-an-analog-guy-in-a-digital-world-nor-a-digial-guy-in-an-analog-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Neither an Analog Guy in a Digital World Nor a Digital Guy in an Analog World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From The Register: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2005\/07\/02\/analog_or_digital\/\">Are our brains analog, or digital?<\/a>.<br \/>\nTo which I ask, what are these &#8220;analog&#8221; and &#8220;digital?&#8221;  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.<br \/>\nWith severe apologies to Frost:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nSome say the world is analog<br \/>\nSome say it&#8217;s digital<br \/>\nLooking through the physics catalog<br \/>\nI side with those who favor analog.<br \/>\nBut if I was a little experimental<br \/>\nI think I know enough of science<br \/>\nTo say that of the world digital<br \/>\nIs also possible<br \/>\nAnd may even be elemental .\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From The Register: Are our brains analog, or digital?. To which I ask, what are these &#8220;analog&#8221; and &#8220;digital?&#8221; 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, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2005\/08\/11\/neither-an-analog-guy-in-a-digital-world-nor-a-digial-guy-in-an-analog-world\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Neither an Analog Guy in a Digital World Nor a Digital Guy in an Analog World&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}