Quote Originally Posted by Taosaur View Post
But why do computers transcend the metaphor that has applied to all our technologies, and establish total identity with what we are? What makes you so certain that we aren't simply infatuated with the most recent development in our technical abilities? The definition of a computer is a machine to do maths, identical in principle to a calculator. That we have devised myriad ways to make maths simulate a variety of systems does not make math-machines equal in principle to what we are. Whatever we can program machines to simulate, the granularity of our real environs is greater, because ultimately it is infinite.
Like a computer, we are not somehow outside of ourselves. Like a computer, we are not somehow immune to our programming. We are advanced programming.

We are not literal computers in the sense that we aren't tractors, yes. That's obviously not what ClouD's asking. He's poking at a computer's deterministic nature and its programmed mission ("meaning"), and comparing it to humans. I'm saying that we aren't different, that we're still bound by the same laws except while computers are programmed by an external body for a specific purpose beneficial to a user, we're programmed by the environment, for survival (and the only reason we're here and programmed for survival is because the ones without the motivation to survive died).