About the brain and its complexities. The common fruit fly has a brain the size of a sesame seed, and does some amazingly complex things. A brain with 300,000 neurons. And only a handful control the incredibly complex act of flying! Something that the best scientists in todays world can't even come close to replicating no matter how many computers we throw at it.
See the show for a pretty good description. (link below)
What I've always mentioned to Dharma (my wife) is that I'm amazed that there are things THEMSELVES THE SIZE of a sesame seed, you know, gnats, that can fly in very complex ways - can avoid my hand and tissue very effectively, for example.
The show leads up to the question of mind vs brain. The analogy made by a neuroscientist was that if you replaced one neuron in a brain with a suitably designed semiconductor switch, it should work the same way. If you replace two or ten, it should continue to work the same way. Eventually if you replaced all of the neurons with chips, would it continue to work the same way? In the sense that it would be conscious and have an identity?? That is questionable and I believe it wouldn't work - the brain, I believe, does things at a subatomic and quantum level that creates consciousness. If not that, then perhaps something about the complexity that arises from such an enormous number of neurons gives rise to consciousness. Like cells vs animals and humans vs societies. Traders vs markets....
What are your thoughts on this??
(Hahahahaha - get it?, no seriously what are your thoughts?)
Here's the link to the show:
http://www.thirteen.org/curious/
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