The Computer and the Brain
by John Von Neumann · first published 1958
43% recommend48% neutral10% critical
Why HN recommends it
A short, approachable essay comparing computers and the brain. Its foreword places the 1950s ideas in modern context. Suited to readers curious about the origins of computing and the brain.
Common criticism: Some find its comparisons of neurons and hardware dated since the 1950s
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
This second edition has a foreword by Churchland & Churchland (c) 2000
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The Computer and the Brain, by John von Neumann Introduction to Algorithms, by Thomas H. Cormen The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth [naturally!] Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines, by Marvin L. Minsky Godel,…
on “Ask HN: Good all-round CS book” ↗…expression to apply here is "Who watches the watchmen?" The answer again is the watchmen must watch themselves and be very reliable. On this topic I recommend von Neumann's (the brilliant mathematician) "Computer and the brain" book, where he explores how computing systems can be reliably interconnected and how those failure probabilities interact. He was interested on how the brain could be so robust to failure -- don't worry…
on “My home lab setup for highly-available Internet” ↗…absent minded, I suspect that it had to be something that piqued his interest, but his sense of what was interesting was extremely broad. He did in fact speculate on the workings of the brain in The Computer and the Brain, which is based on a lecture series he had planned out but did not deliver. It was more in the context of automata theory, but as someone with an interest in AI, automata, and neuroscience, it was frankly…
on “The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann” ↗…technology could interface with biological life in a complementary way and those ways should be pursued. I think he was ultimately successful since we take a lot of those ideas for granted today. "The Computer and The Brain" by John von Neumann is a great and short read. It mostly talks about how binary signals can be fired by synapses in the brain.
on “Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?” ↗John von Neumann wrote an essay on the topic titled The computer and the brain, which is quite a good comparison between the two types of systems, even though knowledge of the two was pretty primitive at the time. The basic idea is that computers are multiple orders of magnitude…
on “Past Performance is Not Indicative of Future Results (2020)” ↗…detailing what it means to engineer High Performance Browser Networking: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17985198-high-performanc... if you ever wanted to know what happens inside a browser The Computer and the Brain: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/358880.The_Computer_and_... where the master compares the machine with our brain The Grammatical Man: If you ever wanted to know the importance of structure and constraint…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite books of all time, and why?” ↗I started reading "the computer and the brain", derived from the unperformed silliman lectures by John von Neumann. The foreword of this small book is almost as large as the main content and does an excellent job of contextualising it in terms of…
on “Turing Oversold?” ↗This is a great read. von Neumann was pivotal in the design of architecture, I think his contribution is way under appreciated - did you know he also wrote a terrific book The Computer and the Brain and coined the term the Singularity? https://onepercentrule.substack.com/p/the-architect-of-tomor...
on “The Soul of an Old Machine: Revisiting the Timeless von Neumann Architecture” ↗for a chance to experience his mind, I recommend his book: "The computer and the brain".
on “The Legend of von Neumann (1973) [pdf]” ↗…out of my system. So in my particular case, these stimulants stretch out time. Literally. Like I think they improve the refractory period of my neurons, von Neumann talks about that in his book The Computer and the Brain, call it what you want, but I'll sit there thinking it's been over three hours since I sat down when it's only been an hour and fifty minutes. Guess what? You get twice as much time to figure out what…
> John von Neumann wrote an essay on the topic titled The computer and the brain I have to be honest, I would take any such comparison from the 1950's with a huge pinch of salt. I think perceptions about how "dumb" an individual neuron is as a processing unit have shifted quite…
on “Past Performance is Not Indicative of Future Results (2020)” ↗Having read "The Computer and the Brain" by von Neumann. I would argue some key aspects of the von Neuman architecture are a computer's ability to store a program in memory, and have it fetched to run on the CPU. Another important aspect is…
on “The Death of the Von Neumann Architecture” ↗The author conflates brains and minds. Of course brain wetware is not computer hardware, but Minds run on wetware as computation runs on hardware. He claims we don't use algorithms to catch balls but then describes the heuristic we do use algorithmically. He attacks von Neumann's nascent speculations that the mind can be usefully modelled digitally but ignores von Neumann's proposal for an alte
on “The brain is not a computer” ↗It’s a real shame that Von Neumann died before finishing The Computer and the Brain.
on “Theory of Self Reproducing Automata (1966) [pdf]” ↗Neumann’s Computer and The Brain book is way out of date in terms of today’s hardware, but funnily it is still relevant in this metric. Biological systems are more analogous to a distributed system of small, very slow CPUs. Even GPUs…
on “Do Machine Learning Models Memorize or Generalize?” ↗