Computers are built of hardware which allows software to be programmed. Someone cleverly observed that our brain is “wetware” supported by meat which produces thought and consciousness.
I accept wetware as my whole body. A computer is hard elements suspended in air. My body is some 35 trillion cells of my own DNA and an almost equal number of visiting bacteria, fungi, and viruses. All sloshing fluidly in water, incessantly unimaginably active.
The difference, of course, is that one can turn a computer off and on. The uncountable chemical transactions in each of our cells cannot be stopped. Death is pretty permanent.
Cryogenicists claim suspension will work. I doubt it. Futurists claim a singularity where hardware is more capable than wetware. I think not. But these are irrelevant to me today.
I try to know myself well, but I am mostly ignorant of all that is happening in me as I composed this and write. I could say “well I am instructing my fingers,” but I am not _ I am writing this as a singular mature entity. Mysterious, expansive, and incapable of expressing as language.
Pretending we are like machines, or like programs, or like anything at all can be fun and even instructive. But we must never confuse playful analogies with the infinitely intricate real thing.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 