When someone utters the phrase, "The brain is of course just a computer"

This tells you two things:

1. This person doesn't actually know that much about the brain/body/consciousness/etc.

2. You might also want to be suspicious about this person's thoughts on how computers work, too

All analogies break down at a certain point

All of them

They're all simplifications or extrapolations that are meant to make a point or emphasize something

And so when someone says "X is like Y"

You should figure out 1. what point they're trying to make with the analogy, 2. whether it actually is similar in those respects, and 3. where the analogy breaks down, and whether this is a problem for the argument at hand

@researchfairy analogies are on a spectrum of strong to weak in my understanding. Useful as a rhetorical device for persuading your assessor of your point but not good for proving it.

I get tired of the “brain and computer are same” argument analogy. Same with “LLM is a power tool.”