Your brain is also basically an algorithm that produces results based on training data. It's just a much more complicated and flexible one.

But it’s also based on neurons with far more complex behavior than artificial neurons and also has other separate dynamic systems involving neurochemicals, various effects across the nervous system and the rest of the body (the gut becoming seemingly more and more relevant), various EEG patterns, and most likely quantum effects.

I personally wouldn’t rule out that it can’t be emulated in a different substrate, but I think calling it “an algorithm” is to def stretch and misapply the usefulness of the term.

If it performs a computation, it is by definition running some algorithm regardless of how it's implemented in hardware / wetware. How is it a stretch?

The only way our brains could be not algorithmic is if something like soul is a real thing that actually drives our intelligence.

> The only way our brains could be not algorithmic is if something like soul is a real thing that actually drives our intelligence.

Therein lies the question, one which deserves contemplation and can lead to Enlightenment.

Which then begs the question; is Enlightenment a "real thing" and, if not, how is it that it can be experienced?

Why? Rain is not algorithmic, clouds are not algorithmic, waves in the sea are not algorithmic, yet they are entirely physical processes that have nothing to do with souls.

None of these are computational processes, unlike intelligence. Unless you're trying to argue that intelligence isn't, either?

Heaven forbid. I'd go to jail for such a blasphemous transgression of common law, wouldn't I? Thank you kind stranger for reminding me of the legislation.

You people are insufferable.