mac@uvacs.UUCP (11/10/83)
If there were any 'subroutines' in the brain that could not halt... I'm sure they would have been found and bred out of the species long ago. I have yet to see anyone die from an infinite loop. (umcp-cs.3451) There is such. It is caused by seeing an object called the Zahir. One was a Persian astrolabe, which was cast into the sea lest men forget the world. Another was a certain tiger. Around 1900 it was a coin in Buenos Aires. Details in "The Zahir", J.L.Borges.
kissell@flairvax.UUCP (Kevin Kissell) (11/13/83)
"...If there were any subroutines in the brain that did not halt..." It seems to me that there are likely large numbers of subroutines in the brain that aren't *supposed* to halt. Like breathing. Nothing wrong with that; the brain is not a metaphor for a single-instruction-stream processor. I've often suspected, though, that some pathological states, depression, obsession, addiction, etcetera can be modeled as infinite loops "executed" by a portion of the brain, and thus why "shock" treatments sometimes have beneficial effects on depression; a brutal "reset" of the whole "system".