Anthropomorphic systems

Why are so many of our Human Information Processing Systems (HIPS) anthropomorphic?

Because many (if not all) of the truly original and creative designs are the results of meditations on how our own mind works. Then copied and projected into the physical world. I draw a distinction between brain and mind. Even neuropsychologists confuse the two, and most ordinary folk do as well. The mind is not necessarily in the brain.

Why do people confuse the two?

Most likely because of an obsession with the "physical" reality. As in, if you can't see or touch it, it's not real. What are TV and radio signals then? Are they not real? Or do they only become real when they become tangible, when you hear or see them? But that's a nonsense, the reality already existed 100s or 1000s of miles away (at the transmitter) before it was locally real and we perceived it.

Some might say it's not real, because it's not visible, it's been transformed into a different format that can't be seen. But that's also a nonsense. The visible spectrum of light only makes up a very narrow band in the whole spectrum of electromagnetic energy and frequencies.

Even more basic is electricity. You can't see or touch it. Even when you get an electric shock, what we're perceiving isn't the electricity, it's the damage to our own cells (the shock) or the ionisation of the air around the spark gap (the spark). But would anyone deny electricity is real? Yet we only perceive the effect of electricity, not the electricity itself.

Back to the brain - what's it for if the mind & memories are somewhere else? I'm tempted by a computing and telecommunications analogy - maybe the brain is more like a router / gateway to a quantum biology or holographic domain?

Next : Symbolic logic