Seriously, molecular biologists devote decades of study and publish volumes figuring out how some small virus 'works'. A human neuron is orders of magnitude more complex than such a virus. To dismiss it as 'like an _____', is a (sometimes necessary) analogy of very little explanatory depth.
I'm not dismissing things. In fact, 'JoeAltmaier is correct that my analogy here was in context of the usual "neuron as signal adder" / "neuron as transistor".
And yes, I'm aware neurons are complex. But that does not mean all of that complexity is relevant to the task of thinking; all living cells have machinery related to self-replication, self-maintenance and survival in a biological system.
Or to use another analogy - a smartphone is orders of magnitude more complicated than a flashlight. Yet in context of people illuminating their way during the night, a smartphone is just a flashlight.
Metaphors help understanding. A neuron is more on the order of an entire logic subsystem, than a transistor or a gate. That's a reasonable comparison-of-complexity statement.
