(September 2, 2014 at 7:34 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Here's a point to consider-- the brain never reaches the exact same state twice, either. It is in a case of constant flux-- the movement of blood, chemicals, neurotransmitters, etc, the cycle of a neuron firing and the time it takes to "recharge" before it can be stimulated again, etc. I have serious doubts that if you could feed the exact same input into a person (something that's impossible, but let's imagine), that the exact same neurons would fire.
This is an important way in which a brain is different than a computer. A computer, given the same inputs, CAN activate the exact same circuits, in the exact same way (on the macro level at least).
Yes, the brain is a system with a number of feedback mechanisms built in.
You can actually design an ANN with such a feedback mechanism, so that, if you leave it running and present the same problem on different cycles, it will yield different results. If you reset the ANN, you'll go back to square one and you'll get the same series of results.... but resetting a brain isn't really an option, is it?