Pondering.

[Sensei Kiisu]

"If our brains were simple enough to understand, we wouldn't have the brainpower to understand them."

I saw this quote many years ago, however.. is it reasonable to believe it? Are our brains that complex that we will never be able to fully understand them. I know we have psychology, neurology etc, which strive to understand how the brain works more and more each day, but will we ever know for sure? After all, we only use around 10% of our brain-power..

[Phier]

At some point we may reach a maximum point of human ability to understand. We haven't reached that limit yet, but unless we continually evolve to be more intelligent, odds are we will.

[Sensei Kiisu]

At some point we may reach a maximum point of human ability to understand. We haven't reached that limit yet, but unless we continually evolve to be more intelligent, odds are we will.

Mhmm, it's like - why so many of us fail to comprend the idea of 'nothingness', and a 'before time' theory, - I guess we simply do not have the brain-power to understand..

[iudas]

At some point we may reach a maximum point of human ability to understand. We haven't reached that limit yet, but unless we continually evolve to be more intelligent, odds are we will.

Some will definitely evolve. Others will lag behind.

[Claudius Gothicus]

At some point we may reach a maximum point of human ability to understand. We haven't reached that limit yet, but unless we continually evolve to be more intelligent, odds are we will.

I seriously doubt we are becoming more 'intelligent'.

Or even reach 'full capacity'.

What's happening on the other hand is that the constant specialization in sciences may allow us as a 'scientific community' to gradually accumulate knowledge about more and more fields faster than before. However this happens as a whole, individuals accumulate IMHO the same amount that hundreds years ago only more specific.

[Phier]

I seriously doubt we are becoming more 'intelligent'.

Or even reach 'full capacity'.

What's happening on the other hand is that the constant specialization in sciences may allow us as a 'scientific community' to gradually accumulate knowledge about more and more fields faster than before. However this happens as a whole, individuals accumulate IMHO the same amount that hundreds years ago only more specific.

I'm saying its quite possible we hit a wall. Where we just can't go any further and even the brightest genius among us can't grasp that next step.

[Elfdude]

I seriously doubt we are becoming more 'intelligent'.

Or even reach 'full capacity'.

What's happening on the other hand is that the constant specialization in sciences may allow us as a 'scientific community' to gradually accumulate knowledge about more and more fields faster than before. However this happens as a whole, individuals accumulate IMHO the same amount that hundreds years ago only more specific.

Well it's not true we learn the same amount however compulsory education and public education was not really availible a few hundred years ago. So it's not clear if the reason we learn more today is because of schooling or not. As of yet no one has spent enough time in school/on their own to get to the point where they're unable to learn more (that we know of). Most get tired of learning before then, there's only a few people who enjoy knowledge for knowledge's sake and I don't think they've ever reached their limit. As it is our limit is probably how long we live, it seems that even learning as fast as a person can manage our death comes far before the limits of our learning come.

[gambit]

I seriously doubt we are becoming more 'intelligent'.

Or even reach 'full capacity'.

What's happening on the other hand is that the constant specialization in sciences may allow us as a 'scientific community' to gradually accumulate knowledge about more and more fields faster than before. However this happens as a whole, individuals accumulate IMHO the same amount that hundreds years ago only more specific.

I seriously doubt we aren't. The benefits of modern times - mandatory schooling, a constant access to information with things like internet and broadcasting, and just a society that's always trying to get as much done as possible - it all means we're stimulating more parts of our brains than ever before, more consistently and on a larger scale. A large reason (I think) we don't use full, or even major, capacity of our brains is because we probably couldn't physically (or perhaps psychologically) handle it as we currently are. For thousands of years mankind has been using a very small amount of our potential brainpower and our minds have adapted this as our comfort zone; it's like a muscle. We have to start working it, and keep working it, then work it some more before we can use more significant levels of capacity. Unfortunately, since we're dealing with large scale evolutionary capacity, that means we wont be seeing noticeable progress for generations

of course, I'm just an uneducated dwarf so take it as it is

[Copperknickers II]

That quote makes no sense at all. What mathematical equation exactly does it refer to? Look at the percussion propulsion system in firearms , it is capable of amazing things yet it is extremely simple. Look at the Moon Rockets of 1960s, hugely complex and expensive and yet have less computing power than today's scientific calculators. I know these are not perfect similes but there is simply no corellation between ability to understand something and complexity of the equipment you use to understand it.

[chamaeleo]

Some will definitely evolve. Others will lag behind.

Uhh...yeah. Sorta. Whoever procreates successfully will allow our species to evolve. Everyone else simply disappears from the genetic history of our lineage.

Many researchers believe that most of our brains' evolutionary development was allocated towards language skills, tracking social contracts and recognizing subtle cues, rather than to aid in the construction of tools, etc. Owning the fanciest stone hammer does you little good in the long run, when inadequate social skills impacts your mating opportunities...

I wonder if this recent trend to communicate facelessly across the globe to much broader peer groups, may act to shift human selective pressures. Dating websites allow people to filter each other out in a manner more akin to employers shuffling stacks of resumes, and when two online acquaintances do meet face to face they've likely already shared a lot of deep "interaction". Even if only 1 / 10 matings resulting in children result from online dating, that's gotta influence the direction our species is headed.

It must really suck to finally meet your www-dreamboat, only to discover that you're allergic to her shampoo. Or worse.

[Elfdude]

I saw this quote many years ago, however.. is it reasonable to believe it? Are our brains that complex that we will never be able to fully understand them.

Eh not really. For example there's more possible interactions between the muscles in your body then there are atoms in the visible universe. Our brain learns in procedurally not linearly. Basically we create rules that allow us to condense a huge amount of concrete information into a rule that we can use to derive information as we need it. We are capable of using thousands if not millions if not billions of these rules every second.

As far as our brains go, the difficulty in understanding them comes from the shear number of cells and complexity in their interactions. One neuron is more or less the same as any other neuron. The thing that makes a collection of neurons a brain is how they connect to each other. Considering we have about 100,000,000,000 neurons in our brain and every neuron is theoretically capable of connecting to every other we have a lot of permutations to sort through. Further the interactions don't occur just between two neurons, they occur over thousands of neurons each with their own individual connections and possible connections. The best supercomputers we have can reproduce this for our brain stem alone which is far more simple than our full brain.

Then we have to take into account how hormones and chemical signals interact with the electric potential of our brain. Then we have to take into account our extended nervous system etc etc etc before we'll truly understand how our brain works and be able to reproduce it. However we do know the general rules quite well.

It's best to look at science as circles within circles. The large circle represents more general knowledge with each circle inside representing more and more specific knowledge. Circles are drawn within circles as more exceptions are found and explained. i.e the big circle gives us general knowledge of the organ, however soon we realize that this general rule does not describe everything of that organ, thus we get continuously more and more specific understanding the brain in greater and greater detail. So saying we don't understand the brain is kind of a mis-representation of the facts.

I know we have psychology, neurology etc, which strive to understand how the brain works more and more each day, but will we ever know for sure?

Psychology is the study of human behavior. It observes how the output of our brain influences our behavior. Neurology is the study of how the brain itself works. Biology is the study of how life works. Physiology is the study of how shape and form influence function. Chemistry is the study of how elements interact with each other. Physics is the study of how energy, matter etc works.

Factors of each of these disciplines influence our understanding of how our body and how the brain works. You can't really stimulate research into one and expect to solve the mystery you have to wait for more and more knowledge to come in. For example we know a hell of a lot more about physics than we do about biochemistry. The issue is although we understand the rules the guide how biochemistry works we don't know all of chemicals within our body and their organization. We must explore and disect and study in ever growing detail to allow us to derive the more complex things (how the mind works) from the basic things.

Theoretically if we understood how every protein in the body was shaped, the chemical organization of the atoms within it, and how those proteins connected to form the different structures in our body we could derive how the brain works exactly.

Also theoretically if our calculation power approaches infinite (quantum computing becomes real and applicable) we could derive more or less everything from what we know and how that applies to reality.

After all, we only use around 10% of our brain-power..

No, that's a myth. We have little idea how much data our mind can handle. We use all parts of our brains though. Part of how the brain works isn't just which neurons are active but also which ones aren't.

In my experience the more I learn the faster I learn. I might forget a few of the concepts but they're in their in vague enough terms for me to pick them up again fast as well as understand the implications of new concepts that build off of them.

[Solid Snake]

Lots of research still has to be done before we can say thow exactly does our brain works, jsut grab a random Neuroanatomy book or Neurophisiology and you´ll get blown away by the number of connections that neurons have between each other and then with the subcortical areas, lymbic system, reticular formation, cerebellus (sp?) etc and we conclude there´s still a workload to figure out.