The brain is a joke.

Philosophy Forums Science, Technology, and Math
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The human brain - mind is, contrary to what most people think, the simplest item in the universe. We have a quantized language that breaks up reality into a relatively few tokens, a language that is just a sequence of symbols that are really always saying the same thing (aka nothing really meaningful), a few emotions and a few sensations. That’s all. We also have consciousness that is a monolithic slab of pure existence, it is as if we really live in a small mathematical equation, everything very obvious and determined. Probably one of the most simple items in the universe. We are actually a very simple circuit, a rock is much more complicated and interesting since it has no regularity at all and we humans are pure regularity.

What the brain - mind is and does is a massive simplification of reality. Just like a computer, it quantizes information in simple boxes and elaborates upon those boxes completely eliminating all the extra “noise” and detail of which reality is truly composed of. It is as if it simply and constantly talks to itself, a sequence of random symbols talking to itself. So those who think the brain - mind is complex have it all wrong: it is upside down, the brain - mind is the simplest and most trivial item of the universe.

The entire human being is just as trivial, great complex biochemistry to produce a trivial brain - mind with its fairy tale logic, a few emotions and some sensations; incredible! And we really think this item of the universe is remarkable. Why were we able to create computers and TV sets in the first place ? because the signals we actually need and use are very simple and in fact we easily created both items; the digital computer and the DVD just show how simple our construction of reality actually is. Just a few billion bits and we can create a 2 hour movie.

And then why can’t our science evolve anymore ? with all the resources and brain power being poured into research, why are the results smaller and smaller ? because our mind is limited, we can manipulate reality only up to a certain point. Natural evolution can manipulate reality to a much greater extent than we can. And then again the Technological Singularity will either occur very soon or never, because the idea of exponential scientific growth has been around for 50 years, but it is not kicking in and the more time passes the less likely it is true, given for example that we even have the internet today that connects all the research and millions of computers.

Or maybe we need many millions of more scientists to wade through all the information available…

An interesting response I got from this idea on another thread is, but I am not sure what it means…

"Interesting theory. So we got reductionism upside down: the assemblage of or sum of complex items create a very simple end item. So molecules which are complex create less complex neurons and millions of neurons create a very simple mind - conscious like item. So our brain - mind - consciousness is one of the simplest items of the universe even though its internal circuits and constituent parts are extremely complex. So then societies are even simpler than minds since they are made up of millions of simple minds. Maybe society is really simple in that it has no logic at all, but you say logic represents simplicity, so then maybe societies have a very simple logic as explained in any sociology book. Or maybe just look at a typical highway and you can see how simple social networks are, they are just a bunch of metal cans (aka cars) rolling down roads.

So physics - the universe - reality goes from very complex ( the smaller the constituent items) to very simple, but with the arrow pointing the other way around of what we usually think. From extremely complex quantum virtual particles to complex atoms to molecules to minds which are the simplest and most obvious structure. "

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But remember that science is a non linear affair. You may have a million years with society exactly as is today, with small incremental evolution in all sciences, no major changes. But then all of a sudden you could have certain connections made between information and certain completely new inventions - applications, a bit like the internet was the connection of HTML encoded pages and package switching technology.

A simple connection and you get a completely new item; after all science is mostly a combinational affair, a combination of different information put in a certain way, so you can have thousands or millions of years of scientific information accumulating and combining in different ways and then maybe in the year 6,788,987 you get the Technological Singularity.

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It may be simple, but it’s still the most complex and powerful computational device in the known universe. Every single thing is simple, from a certain point of view.

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It isn’t the brain that is simple since we don’t even know what simple or complex is since we are measuring it with our own simple or complex mind, like looking in mirror, it is the range of possible experiences that are really greatly limited.

You can imagine a law of conservation of mental configurations that could be all the information in your mind along with your desires, goals, experiences memories etc. Well whatever you have in your brain, the experience you have is always the same or very similar to any other previous one you had, no matter what other information or goals or knowledge or memories you acquire. It contradicts the idea that you really accumulate knowledge, what you do have is a constant similar experience to what you have always had.

So inputting further information won’t change your experience much. The range of possible experiences connected to what you live, the meaninigs you associate to items, the sensations - emotions and feelings in the end is quite limited and repeatable. We live through the same range of possible experiences we can have over and over again from one year of age to 99 years of age, and no matter what else you acquire as information, those possible experiences remain fixed. You can read a trillion books but the range of experiences you can have is always limited and there is no further increase in knowledge past a certain point. We simply assign values and symbols and meanings to things, activate emotions connected to things arbitrarily, measure things and assign values as we wish, but in the end we always assign the same values even though they may seem greatly larger.

This brings us to the idea of Technological Singularity, the idea of creating a new mind - emotion system, engineering our brains to feel and live a much wider range of possible experiences. Some people try with drugs ?

I think the internet with the convergence of all forms of information, from books, pictures, music, movies, internet radio and internet tv is actually sending this message: information is always the same, the range of experiences is always the same. A dangerous message ?

But then why have a wider range of experiences ? who cares ? and even if we had an extra million different possible experiences, there would always be another trillion possible engineered brains having an even wider range, so what is the goal ? Philosophy is always a mess…

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Interesting take on the subject. But if you don’t know the other experiences or you are not within the context of these other new experiences you can’t talk about them and they are totally irrelevant to you. Is your experience relevant to a rock, or is the way a dog experiences the world relevant to a human ? not much, if any, and then if you don’t know what these experiences are, they really don’t exist except as science fiction or theoretical fluff.

Then the point that there is a limited range of possible experiences is also very subjective. You don’t know how another person feels and lives his life, what possible experiences he lives. What may seem a small range and what can seem a small difference for you can indeed be huge differences for others, can trigger huge emotions - sentiments and feelings. A hard core football player can live life to its fullest and you can’t even begin to know what range of experiences he has (unless you are a football player, but I doubt it, you are way too abstract and theoretical). And that hard core football player can look at your theory and consider it just ridiculous fluff and abstraction whereas he really “LIVES” life.

Maybe you mean the many detached experiences people have, like watching movies, and reading books, where the emotional level is always relatively low as compared to real experiences. What I think is that you abstract and generalize too much, there is no way for you to really know or have any idea of the possible ranges of experiences in life, there are way too many and very different from person to person and context to context.