Brains don't perform computations. It's a great analogy to learn from but it isn't a perfect one. What kind of work we think the brain performs and the information that it stores is not performed or stored the same way a machine would do the work. If someone remembers to check for the mail, the assume it is because their brain has stored that reminder somewhere for them and brings it back out when they pass the mail box. They see the result and try to make sense of how it happened - and let's face it, a good car or computer metaphor usually gets the job done. But it is much more different and complicated and misunderstood than that.

I really like it when people say 'just a result of chemicals in your brain'. The kind of awesome, everyday, chemical coordination it takes to make you live, think, and feel things is is pretty amazing and hardly understood in many fields but we rely on it intensely to experience the world. How can someone say 'just' about a process like that?

I am very much in the brain chemicals camp, obviously, but it just blows me away how people think that is such a cold, detached way to look at things. I mean, it is an incredibly special thing to happen, for a fruit fly all the way up to a human being. I don't get why people think it is humdrum because we are born with the ability to function the way we do. It allows us to interact with each other, for better or worse - how can something like that be cold or detached?

I think Tim Minchin said it best. "“Isn’t this enough? Just this world? Just this beautiful, complex wonderfully unfathomable world?"