Brain vs Computer

I have heard this many times about how powerful the "unlocked" brain can be and no matter how advanced computers get they will still not have the capabilities of the brain,first i ask what exactly do you think these capabilities are and second i greatly disagree with this notion, computers can solve problems involving numbers over a million in nanoseconds and once quantum computing goes into practical use billions of calculations in even less time, their ability to remember everything they percieve without a slight sense of forgetness, to store giga and terabytes of information in spaces much smaller than the human brain and with the right programming to think about thousands of things effortlessly and flawlessly, and once freed of their overly rational thinking can have imaginations, how exactly could the human mind compete with that sure maybe we have some locked up potential waiting to be released but the constructs of the biological computer (brain) only goes so far then we must rely on computers to do the thinking for us, which is partly why they were created in the first place.

Romulus, we are unable to create a computer as good as our own mind. The best supercomputer is not as efficient as powerfull as our brains are.

The good thing about a computer is that it can focus 100% of it's brainpower (CPU) to one task. However if you would have a computer doing all the things we do in one day it would overload!
Our brains are very, very, very complex.

I do not believe in outer-body experiences, the third eye or "the sight", or any such things. However, since we use such a small portion of our brain, much of our true potential remains unknown.
Will we suddenly evolve in to a higher species able to change reality as Neo did? Doubtful, but it will probably allow us to be better at multitasking, at math, physics (understanding relativity). If we work those brains to it's full potential, you can count faster than ANY computer in the world. That I guarantee you.

Neurons, nervecells, are cells that look pretty strange. They have 2 ways of communicating they have dendrites which receivie and one large axon (it can branch into multiple though) that transmits information. These Neurons send electric pulses to each other through these dendrites/axons and through this we are able to remember things, and recognize them.

This we think, to be honest, we know very little about the brain, and it is therefor very unlikely that we will be able to create a computer just as efficient.

People have been experimenting with AI, and there is an AI that can create others machines. It does this however, by choosing from frameworks supplied by the master user (a human!!!!!) and than it builds something, and checks whether it is possible. Than it creates it, and than when it has been assembled by a human (this could be done by a machine, though) a machine that can walk has been created.

This AI is a simple example, but one could create an AI that develops more powerful, efficient planes or tanks. However it doesn't mean the AI will start creating a mass-army against mankind as Hollywood likes to imagine it.

Fnord Fnord,

Homo Universalis

Originally posted by HomoUniversalis


I do not believe in outer-body experiences, the third eye or "the sight", or any such things. However, since we use such a small portion of our brain, much of our true potential remains unknown.
Will we suddenly evolve in to a higher species able to change reality as Neo did? Doubtful, but it will probably allow us to be better at multitasking, at math, physics (understanding relativity). If we work those brains to it's full potential, you can count faster than ANY computer in the world. That I guarantee you.

This we think, to be honest, we know very little about the brain, and it is therefor very unlikely that we will be able to create a computer just as efficient.

This AI is a simple example, but one could create an AI that develops more powerful, efficient planes or tanks. However it doesn't mean the AI will start creating a mass-army against mankind as Hollywood likes to imagine it.

Fnord Fnord,

Homo Universalis


you say better at things like math and physics and understanding relativity, but then what about people like Einstein, Nicola Tesla, and i cant think of anyone who knows/understands more about relativity than stephen hawking are these people the first to use their full brain potential or close to it, or did they just have great ideas and ran with them. and one reason for our limited brain usage is the rest of that 80% or however much brain we are not using is runing unconciously studies have shown that there is more brain activity when we are sleeping than any other time.
hence most of our brain power lies in the unconsious state and at the moment unacesable to us. and my personal opinion it would not matter if we could use 100% brain power because the average person does not use their full 15 or 20% anyway.

True, but a computer can focus 100% of his brain (CPU) to that one task, while we have a lot of background applications running. We always use our ears, nose and such, and are constantly at alert. Our heart must keep moving and so do our lungs. Most people have thoughts running trhough their head all the time.

Imagine this is all gone. Imagine a person that can use all of this 100% to try and imagine Einsteins (he didn't even understand it, nor does Hawking, we just CAN'T imagine it) theories. It is possible that when we can do this, when we are that enlightened, that we raise in the evolutionary ladder and become Homo Universalis (hence my name :p)

You seem to forget that there is no person on earth who is using 100% on this planet, or focusing the 20 percent that he is using..

Matthew 7:12,

Homo Universalis

true but these small things such as heart beat and other mudane task as hearing and seeing are more voluntary, but they still do not take up any considerable thinking power like in a computer small programs like those that keep the background running and the screen saver countdown timer and run at 20 kb of the total processing capability of around 2gigahertz and even thoug they have no bearing on other major proceses just like in the brain they must keep runing so a person could never use 100% brain power because it would result in experiencing complete brain function for maybe a few seconds before death.

and why couldnt we understand it it is not that impossible to comprehend, such as einsteins block time theory that states the past,present and future are happeninjg all at once and our concious state of the "this" is the universe at a certain position in time so there is really another you for every picosecond of time (billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second) experiencing counciousness this is not so hard to imagine i myself have tried to imagine this maybe not every nitty gritty detail of it but the basic idea of it even though a picosecond 'is' impossible to comprehend.

It was not that part of relativity I was referring too, but I am glad you know something about Einstein, it is always good to see someone who seeks knowledge.

However, I suggest you take a class in biology. If we would have to make a computer laugh, it would immediately crash (or slow down if you are using lunix/unix/mac :p) There are so many input exput signals, a computer could not keep up with it...

And although one will never use a complete 100% of the brain, 80% would also mean a miraculous increase in understanding and calculating problems, not even mentioning a heightened sense of perception.

Matthew 7:12,

Homo Universalis

i admit i do not know much about biology but i do know that ity does take quite a bit of signals to laugh moving the many muscles in the jaw, activating the voice box the exhaling of air simoltaneosly, and it makes sense why this would greatly slow down or crash the computer thus there are certain things the brain is better at processing, hence it may be how we evolved in a book called cosmos (a book on everything we know and has happened) it talks about the evolution of the human brain deep inward is the reptialian part which is hooked directly to the madula ablingada (not sure on the spelling) but it controls all of those "mudane" task such as breathing, heart rate certain instincts, the need to mate ect. the comes next is the mammilian part which regulates body temperature, a sense of caring for young herding like behavior, and also fears claustrophobia, fear of heights, then the final step is the frontal lobe which is where we experience consciousness and think, but this is also the second smallest part of the brain but it goes on to say how maybe we might be better suited off if other parts of the brain were smaller and the frontal lobe larger we might be able to think "better" or faster,
and i agree with him maybe if our evolution had been slightly different and our frontal lobes had been huge but greatly reducing in size of the other two parts, it might have faster and better thinking but would come at a cost because of the greatly reduced sizes of the other parts of the brain we might not be able to regulate body temperature and such things as well because it must be a reason why they are so large now and also increased brain activity would raise the temperature of the brain causing blackouts when concentrating to hard,
maybe this will be the next step in our evoluton enlarged frontal lobes without reduced size of the other brain sections hence the grey alien with big heads look lol.

Yeah, but they had huges eyes too :D. I'm not sure what they call it in English, but the brains are kind of bend, like mountains, if you get my meaning. This creates more room for the cells. So the more "mountains" we get in our frontal lobe (if that truly is the way we work) we get the same effect.

If this is true though, an AI could indeed be the next evolution, we could create bigger frontal lobes ourselves!

Matthew 7:12,

Homo Universalis

thats exactly how it is and ectually they're called valleys because the "indents in the brain sink inward as more surface space is needed they found that a newborn baby's brain is nearly smooth
which supports the idea that the more info you know the more wrinkly the brain gets. ive seen a lot of movies where people suddenly get these huge brains and they develop telepathy or something i wonder if that is even remotely true or just something else of science fiction that will stay fiction.

and maybe none of these will be the next step in evolution maybe we will someday evolve either by natural selection or genetic enhancement or maybe we will grow impateint of waiting for evolution to make the next move and make it for ourselves and turn the human species into symbiotes of man and machine combining the imagination and intuition of man and the blazing thinking speed of machine then we will escalate into a higher form leting nothing stand in our way and go only where there is left to go but up into the cosmos to see things we have only dreamed or theorized about.

lol and now this thread has seemed to turn into something else.

Things stray away from a subject. I can only say I agree with you, romulus. May your brain grow wrinkly!

Matthew 7:12,

Homo Universalis

i was reading an article in scientific america yesterday and this one one guy Donals A. Norman thinks that when AI is accomplished they should be taught to feel fear,pride and frustration to be truly dependable on us, i for one feel that this would be a serious problem and may have undesirable altering effects if they feel emotion they may not want to listen us because of their 'pride', and this frustration may cause them to run into many syntax errors and infinite loops causing them to crash or cause serious bodily harm to their human owners or you might get a situation like that of which caused the matrix you have one robot that does not want to die and ironically kills a few humans then gets taken away to trial sentenced guilty ect., then the other robots with their feelings may feel that they might be dstroyed as well would as well kill their humans and right their is the perfect situation for human machine war but of course the whole situation would only happen under the most extreme of chances

I'm not sure, by giving them emotions (they shouldn't be dominate, though) you do put in a safety measure should something strange happen.
Mercy is pretty handy.

But, as long as we keep our penis out of their floppy disks, we'll be okay!

HU

i have totally followed all of this conversation and i am incredibly intrigued to know, would you even be thinking about this in this way if you hadn't of seen the matrix or heard of it, or if it hadnt of been thought of by anyone else?
i dont think you would have..
but i think all this still comes down to my theory of motivation.. eg. the motivation of this conversation is thirst for knowledge, but that thirst for knowledge was bought on by the matrix..

also i think that people are asking questions and answering them themselves, i think with this sort of subject no-one knows an answer, not for certain.. but some people are so blinded by their own assumptions and theories, although i am not saying you two are incorrect in any form, i am saying that i dont think you really know the answers you get from each-other, but from inside yourselves, i think you are asking questions which you already know the answers to yourselves, but you are trying to find out if anyone feels the same way!

Homo Universalis i was wondering what your name actually means, and i was also wondering if you have any such theories of your own, other than those of whom you have read or learnt eg. Einstien..

actually i would still be thinking about the same things even if i had never seen or heard of the matrix my "quest" for the knowledge i seek started long before my watching of the matrix, but watching it gave me some new ideas that may or may not have come later from reading some book or watching some other movie, just like i have gained many new and different ideas from these very forums,
and yes assumtions blind us as do some theories thats why one must keep an open mind to see the truth that most are blinded by because they dont have the questions to begin with,
and i admit that many of my questions i do somewhat awnser myself but its nice to see someone else's views on the same matter and i find new awnsers but the awnsers to the questions i seek cannot be awnsered by myself at least not right now and who knows some of my questions may not even have awnsers..

Homo Universalis is the evolution of man. It's what you become after you are spiritually and mentally enlightened.

An Illuminatus, btw, is someone enlightened.

I do have a theory about how the Universe was created, but no one will accept my theories as proof, so I do not mention them :), strange isn't it, why no one will believe me..

HU

so an Illuminatus is only one half of homoUniversalis

and no probaly accepts them because they too have their own theories, I for one believe that it was created by not one Big Bang but an infinite number of them through an infinite vastness of space even though i admit this isnt the most imaginative theory kind of drabt actually.

and perhaps this topic should be continued in another thread.

If you have some theory HomoUniversalis, then please start the new thread on it and post me a message.
BTW Did you hear about superstrings?

I know a bit about strings, quarks and their effects on physics "as we know it", but not enough to start a new thread about it. I leave creating threads to other people. I'm not good at just writing down my theories, but if you read all of my posts, and filter out the 800 that are about my theories, I'm sure you'll understand me ;)

When someone is enlightened (I haven't hear anyone who has apart from Buddha (and me ;) ), he is an Illuminatus but also a Homo Universalis.

A member of the Illuminati, might be called a Illuminatus, but is not, despite of what they might think :D .

Romolus, you mean something like this?:


I like to think the universe was created by a Big Bang. How did this Big Bang occur? By a Big Crunch.
Imagine a circle. You cut it, horizontally, in half, and you drop the lower half. Than you put another half next to it, and you continue that infinitely in both directions.

You get something like this. The ~ indicates infinity.

~/\/\/\/\/\~

one /\ resembles one universe, in which one Big Bang, and one Big bang has occured. The top of the "triangle" is the middle of the span of the Universe (where we are in this current universe). the part where the /\ begins is the big bang, where the /\ ends is the Big Crunch.

The Big Crunch is an event in which all matter of the Universe is sucked into one point (think Black hole style). This points has an infinite density, temperature and mass. This "anomoly" than "explodes" in a Big Bang and the universe expands.

Than it collapses again, and etc.

How did it start, you might wonder. It never started! It has always been. It is also a temporary anomoly. Perhaps we, in the end of our universe (or perhaps another civilisation) will travel outside of time (enter another dimension) and create the first big Bang, outside of this universe, and start time itself.

That is my religion. It may not be completely accurate as some scientists believe the Universe will not collapse, and some scientists believe it will collapse, but will never be restored in another Big Bang. I believe they are all wrong .

HU


HU

i assume you are talking about string theory i had a magazine about it i havent bothered to read yet, i would probaly start a thread about it but as i know very little about it yet

and my theory is similar to that i actually go in a lot more detail in response to you i another thread the "End of Time"

Mr.Genius,the brain may not be able to keep a whole lot of memory in it but you should know it that brain can think and imagine and create what ever it likes.So experience the power not the servile nature of the machines.

servile nature? That reminds me of how America looked at black people about 200 hundred years ago.

Judge not, lest ye be judged!

HU

let me hear you r theories on life and the universe i would like to share with you mine also

im takin this from one of my other posts

as for the universe i belive it is infinite with an infinite number of big bangs happening not so simultaneously and since the dark matter between the stars and planets will continue to push everything apart eventually the seperate universe's "boundaries" will mesh together and the endless cycle of black holes will continue to funnel down all this matter, and its here i like to use stephen hawkings theory that black holes once they are 'full' break off and start a new universe hence a new big bang so our universe is just one on an infinite cycle of dimensions each new universe on a different one and at the strat of each one new "laws" of physics are radomized and probaly go into effect a second or two after the bang and with these different rules different forms of life that only exist with their own rules if they were to say come to our universe they would disenegrate or explode/implode only the elementary particles they are made of would survive as they are the same in every universe. but all of these dimensions fall on the 3-D plane as there are probaly infinte number of U's on the 2-D plane as well as 1-D, and some scientist belive the "boundaries" of our universe can only be defined in the 4-D(because it has shape but unbounded) plane we cant imagine the 4-D plane because our minds are in 3-D just like we cannot draw a 3-D figure on paper because the paper is somewhat 2-D, you could try to imagine the 4-D plane like this take a line (1-D) put it at right angles to itself and you get a square (2-D) then take that square and put it at right angles of itself and you get a cube (3-D) now take the square and put it at right angles of itself and you get a hypercube (4-D), and its funny that things or people could possibly travel between these dimension planes(only to lower D though) but we could not travel between our own 3-D universes.
ironicaly my location says im in the fourth dimension.

and as far as life I believe in the chaos theory for that i take yet another post of mine (so much easier to copy paste :) )

i believe our creation was in due part of the chaos theory bunch of randow events led to the creation of the first single celled organisims, ex. a shift in the tides that over time caused too many amino acids to be grouped in one area when an unbalance of electric particles in the clouds caused lightning to strike in that particular spot, you might go as far to say that everything in existence 'is' because of the chaos theory.

and now that ive explained my theory for the fifth time (im multiple threads) its now time to hear yours thelone1

I've been following this thread, (some of it I was too lazy to read, didn't look interesting) and it's been pretty interesting. But there are somethings you are saying that are completely wrong and other opinions that I think I should interject.

First, there is no grounds whatsoever to say we only use x % of our brain. What does that mean? Electrical current only flows through 5, 10 % of our brain, not true. Nor is our brain "more" active when we sleep. Our brain is active in different ways, even if there were more electrical signals in our brain when we sleep, you can't really say that means our brain is more active, if you put your finger into an electrical socket, than your brain will be very electrically active, but not any smarter in any way.

The idea that we have all sorts of magical powers hidden in the parts of the brain we don't use is nonsense. We may be able to learn things that we never expected to learn, but that doesn't really mean that there were prestored in our brains from the day we were born.

The functional unit of the brain is the neuron, there are billions of neurons and each one of these neurons has many connections. There are more potential neuron connections than there are atoms in the universe, if you were to compare the amount of neuron connections we do have to the amount we could have, you would have a ratio much smaller than 1%.

But we can't even really say that memory and consciousness and our brain functions are in our neurons, they could be in something else that we can't observe yet. Our Neurons could just be responsible for our more fundamental brain processes.

Now, as for the difference between brains and computers, it's a bit difficult to fully describe, but a computer was programmed for a specific reason, by a brain. Brains are the result of evolution. The matter in which the human brain evolved into what it is today is mysterious. So is the manner in which your brain evolved into what it is today. Computers certainly can perform mathematical operations much more efficiently than humans can. But humans must have a significant understanding of mathmatics (and computer programming) in order to program a computer to do it. Computers don't solve the highest level mathematical problems yet. Computers most definetly cannot perform mathematical proofs.

Originally posted by Robin
I've been following this thread, (some of it I was too lazy to read, didn't look interesting) and it's been pretty interesting. But there are somethings you are saying that are completely wrong and other opinions that I think I should interject.

First, there is no grounds whatsoever to say we only use x % of our brain. What does that mean? Electrical current only flows through 5, 10 % of our brain, not true. Nor is our brain "more" active when we sleep. Our brain is active in different ways, even if there were more electrical signals in our brain when we sleep, you can't really say that means our brain is more active, if you put your finger into an electrical socket, than your brain will be very electrically active, but not any smarter in any way.

The idea that we have all sorts of magical powers hidden in the parts of the brain we don't use is nonsense. We may be able to learn things that we never expected to learn, but that doesn't really mean that there were prestored in our brains from the day we were born.

The functional unit of the brain is the neuron, there are billions of neurons and each one of these neurons has many connections. There are more potential neuron connections than there are atoms in the universe, if you were to compare the amount of neuron connections we do have to the amount we could have, you would have a ratio much smaller than 1%.

But we can't even really say that memory and consciousness and our brain functions are in our neurons, they could be in something else that we can't observe yet. Our Neurons could just be responsible for our more fundamental brain processes.

Now, as for the difference between brains and computers, it's a bit difficult to fully describe, but a computer was programmed for a specific reason, by a brain. Brains are the result of evolution. The matter in which the human brain evolved into what it is today is mysterious. So is the manner in which your brain evolved into what it is today. Computers certainly can perform mathematical operations much more efficiently than humans can. But humans must have a significant understanding of mathmatics (and computer programming) in order to program a computer to do it. Computers don't solve the highest level mathematical problems yet. Computers most definetly cannot perform mathematical proofs.

The brain being more active while you are sleep are from tests that measure brain activity, and they recorded intensified brain wave activity while sleeping than while awake, ever heard of the notion "let me sleep on it",

and not once on this thread did anyone say anything about the brain having hidden powers, just a hightened sense of comprehension and understanding

you cant say there are more neuron connections that there are atoms in the universe because how do you know how big the universe is, anyway its not feesible to compare that neuron connection to those we could have because the more connections there are the more energy you use the higher your body temperature will be thats why there is more brain activity when you are sleeping because less body functions are running so more power can be diverted to the "thinking" process without raising body temp,

and a computers can solve nearly every mathematical problem, even the highest level problems, what they cant yet do is like you said geometry proofs, and some matrices problems which are very advanced algebra, they cannot yetr solve these problems because of simple things that come natural to humans like proofs
which take intelligence to accurately solve, it just doesnt make sense to a computer (ex. X=5+56 to fourth power)something like that , to solve proofs you need "common sense" you cant program common sense

brian here is why. if the brian controlls the body and the body produces enough electricity then a 12V battery and that is what the mechines live off of then they to can not live without the brian.