This article is arguing against people who overextend a metaphor comparing brains and computers, but it's doing it by taking the opposite position to a completely absurd extreme. In the framework it describes, not only is a brain not a computer, but there is no such thing as a computer, and it is impossible for one to ever be created.
It could be justified in making a prescriptive case that people should change how we think about and talk about human brains to shift away from computer analogies, but it's written descriptively with a nonsensical portrayal of what people mean when they say "information" or "memory". Many of the things this article attacks are not computer metaphors at all, they're the way language has been used long before modern computers existed.
For a simple enough computer (four function calculator or similar) a human can perform in exactly the same way as the computer for any possible input or interaction. This means that there is at least some conceptual overlap between the behaviors of a human and a computer. Not a metaphor, literal commonality. When someone says that a calculator processed numbers, it's not a statement about the mechanics or philosophical implications of what a calculator is, it's about the role the calculator is playing in transforming inputs to outputs. If a human can take on the exact same role, there's no reason they wouldn't also be processing numbers, unless we choose to categorically exclude them.
To apply the intent of the article to this list of words, either their definitions need to be changed to explicitly say they can't be applied to humans, or they all need to be removed from the english language completely. From the examples given about brains, unless there's an arbitrary distinction, none of them would apply to any situation ever. The author seems to still want to keep using the words to describe computers, but the only justification for why the same logic used to say humans don't have memories wouldn't also apply to computers is to just state that "Computers do all of these things, but organisms do not." Sure, I guess that answers that.
I would have been interested to hear more about how specifically the computer metaphor limits our understanding, and the benefits we can gain by using the alternative of experiences and changes. The article touches on this, but spends most of its length doing a poor job of trying to prove that its framework is an objective truth about reality, rather than a lens that can be adopted or rejected.
This article is arguing against people who overextend a metaphor comparing brains and computers, but it's doing it by taking the opposite position to a completely absurd extreme. In the framework it describes, not only is a brain not a computer, but there is no such thing as a computer, and it is impossible for one to ever be created.
It could be justified in making a prescriptive case that people should change how we think about and talk about human brains to shift away from computer analogies, but it's written descriptively with a nonsensical portrayal of what people mean when they say "information" or "memory". Many of the things this article attacks are not computer metaphors at all, they're the way language has been used long before modern computers existed.
For a simple enough computer (four function calculator or similar) a human can perform in exactly the same way as the computer for any possible input or interaction. This means that there is at least some conceptual overlap between the behaviors of a human and a computer. Not a metaphor, literal commonality. When someone says that a calculator processed numbers, it's not a statement about the mechanics or philosophical implications of what a calculator is, it's about the role the calculator is playing in transforming inputs to outputs. If a human can take on the exact same role, there's no reason they wouldn't also be processing numbers, unless we choose to categorically exclude them.
To apply the intent of the article to this list of words, either their definitions need to be changed to explicitly say they can't be applied to humans, or they all need to be removed from the english language completely. From the examples given about brains, unless there's an arbitrary distinction, none of them would apply to any situation ever. The author seems to still want to keep using the words to describe computers, but the only justification for why the same logic used to say humans don't have memories wouldn't also apply to computers is to just state that "Computers do all of these things, but organisms do not." Sure, I guess that answers that.
I would have been interested to hear more about how specifically the computer metaphor limits our understanding, and the benefits we can gain by using the alternative of experiences and changes. The article touches on this, but spends most of its length doing a poor job of trying to prove that its framework is an objective truth about reality, rather than a lens that can be adopted or rejected.