# Is the human brain the most complex object in the universe? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 31, 2012, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259 "2012-01-31T02:39:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/61 "2012-02-01T16:56:36Z")
Hey Guys, Please define ‘complex’, ‘object’ and ‘part’ in your posts. Because this thread is becoming the most complex object in the universe. Thanks, TriP ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/62 "2012-02-01T17:09:47Z")
> [@JThunder](#): > > The human brain has about [100 billion neurons](http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html) alone — and that’s not counting glial cells, blood vessels, and other attendant components. The world’s largest library, the Library of Congress, has[less than 135 million books](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_books_are_in_the_largest_library_in_the_world) catalogued. I’d say that even by sheer numbers alone, the largest library in the world still falls far short of the human brain. > > Never mind, of course, that the individual cells of the human brain demonstrate massive connectivity, self-correction, and adaptability. Not to mention that each individual cell is itself a tremendously complex mechanism, far more than any individual book. No matter how you cut it, the human brain far outstrips any library in terms of complexity. Well, I would say that the information contained in the library is not based on the number of books but rather the number of letters or symbols. Obviously the ordering of the letters is essential for the storage and retrieval of information, not just pages and bindings, etc. And then we have to determine how many of the brain neuron connections are truly information carrying and not just noise. Sort of a “compressibility” algorithm for the brain. I know I’ve seen some articles about reproducing brain control of an arm by monitoring something like 7 neurons. Obviously it scales up dramatically from there but we have some indication that many of the pathways are redundant (and obviously lots are physically impossible). It seems to me that a brain would need to have the capacity to hold all of the information in the LoC to claim that it has the same level of complexity, at least by this measure. The counter-argument would be that an individual brain holds lots of information not present in the library - personal memories, physiological skills, the automatic functions that the brain performs, etc… To **Tripolar** , I was trying to approach it from a “complexity” definition similar to that in information theory. Object is still rather vague, unfortunately. The question would be how many neuron connections does it take to form a “brain” that is identical in function to an existing one. Surely this number is somewhat less than all of the possible connections between 100 billion neurons, but I don’t think we’re very close to knowing what it is. ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/63 "2012-02-01T17:23:31Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > I mean, the brain controls your mental faculties and is the sole tool you use every day, for every action, to reason about any other thing (or even itself). Yes, the brain controls your mental faculties; however, the brain does not control _mental faculties_. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/64 "2012-02-01T17:34:40Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > Yes, the brain controls your mental faculties; however, the brain does not control _mental faculties_. Paging [Malleus, Incus, Stapes!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=640471) ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/65 "2012-02-01T17:40:15Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > Well, I would say that the information contained in the library is not based on the number of books but rather the number of letters or symbols. Obviously the ordering of the letters is essential for the storage and retrieval of information, not just pages and bindings, etc. > … I’d agree that at a minimum, words, and their sequencing, would be considered parts of a library. But the human brain is a dynamic system, while a library is largely static. I think that makes the brain more complex. It contains processes as well as data. The library might be more complex in terms of the amount of data, but the library itself has pretty limited capacity to act on that data. Simply look at the difference between two libraries, and one human being using one library. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/66 "2012-02-01T17:52:04Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I’d agree that at a minimum, words, and their sequencing, would be considered parts of a library. But the human brain is a dynamic system, while a library is largely static. I think that makes the brain more complex. It contains processes as well as data. The library might be more complex in terms of the amount of data, but the library itself has pretty limited capacity to act on that data. Simply look at the difference between two libraries, and one human being using one library. Yeah, that’s a very good point. A brain would have to be considered as a sequence of states that change over time. A library changes at a much slower pace. Is “the internet” an object? It also changes at a rapid pace and has much more information than even the largest library. Hm… ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/67 "2012-02-01T18:04:58Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > Yes, the brain controls your mental faculties; however, the brain does not control _mental faculties_. I don’t understand… ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/68 "2012-02-01T18:06:20Z")
> [@JThunder](#): > > The human brain has about [100 billion neurons](http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html) alone — and that’s not counting glial cells, blood vessels, and other attendant components. The world’s largest library, the Library of Congress, has[less than 135 million books](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_books_are_in_the_largest_library_in_the_world) catalogued. I’d say that even by sheer numbers alone, the largest library in the world still falls far short of the human brain. Apples to oranges. A neuron by its lonesome is fairly useless, akin to a biological piece of copper wire. It doesn’t receive input, doesn’t produce any either. It looks kinda sad, too. The only way it has a purpose is as part of a larger system. An ensemble of neurons daisy-chained just so can have a function and be a subpart of the larger “object” that is the brain, for example a sensory cortex. The brain is the macro-level amalgamation of all of these various semi-autonomous bundles of cable. Going back to your analogy, I’d say the library is the brain, the books are the sub-divisions, and the characters on each page are the neurons. A character by its lonesome is meaningless, an ensemble of characters in the correct positions forms a book, a macro grouping of books makes a library. There are roughly 3.000 characters on an average page of text. I don’t know how many pages on average the books in the Library of Congress have, but I’d wager they’re not all Chick tracts. Let’s assume a rather lowball 200 average, for a cool 120.000 character total (each page is double sided). That would put the total character count of the Library of Congress at 162 \* 10^11 if I didn’t miss a zero somewhere. That’s a bit over 100 billion, right ? Or if you want to go by words instead of characters, the average would be 250 per page. That’s still 100.000 words per book, 1350 billion words total in the Library of Congress. Suck on that, neurons ! 😛 As for the complexity of books, consider that words also interplay with each other (simplest of examples: “a book” and “red” interplay to make “a red book”, which is a different and more information-packed construct than the simple sum of its parts) and that’s even before we tackle the matter of stylistic considerations, collocations, grammar rules, subtext, metaphores… Quite the piece of work, your average book. Not the Glenn Beck one, though. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/69 "2012-02-01T18:13:46Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Apples to oranges. I’m not disagreeing with you there, but remember… **Jas09** is the one who posited that a good-sized library would be more complex than a human brain. > [@](#): > > A neuron by its lonesome is fairly useless, akin to a biological piece of copper wire. The only way it has a purpose is as part of a larger system. An ensemble of neurons daisy-chained just so can have a function and be a subpart of the larger “object” that is the brain, for example a sensory cortex. The brain is the macro-level amalgamation of all of these various semi-autonomous bundles of cable. Correct, which is why I took pains to point out that these neurons (and glial cells, and blood vessels, and so forth) are massively interconnected in myriad, mysterious ways. This is something that there mere words within a printed book cannot even hope to approach. The interplay between words that you mentioned does not allow for the self-regeneration, self-organization, self-awareness, and growth that a human brain routinely accomplishes. ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/70 "2012-02-01T18:16:16Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > I don’t understand… > [@Jragon](#): > > the brain controls your mental faculties In other words, _your_ brain controls \*your \*mental faculties. However, _your_ brain does not control _mental faculties_. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/71 "2012-02-01T18:29:07Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > In other words, _your_ brain controls \*your \*mental faculties. However, _your_ brain does not control _mental faculties_. Yes? I don’t think I quite get what hair you’re splitting. I think you’re saying that my brain only controls my mental faculties, and not yours and everyone elses. But I thought that was pretty much a given. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/72 "2012-02-01T18:35:08Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > Yes? I don’t think I quite get what hair you’re splitting. I think you’re saying that my brain only controls my mental faculties, and not yours and everyone elses. But I thought that was pretty much a given. I think you should look at my link in post #64 to get the gist of what \*mental faculties \*are. Unless that wasn’t the joke being made. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/73 "2012-02-01T19:02:26Z")
> [@JThunder](#): > > Correct, which is why I took pains to point out that these neurons (and glial cells, and blood vessels, and so forth) are massively interconnected in myriad, mysterious ways. This is something that there mere words within a printed book cannot even hope to approach. My English Lit teacher would be very angry at you right now 😛 > [@](#): > > The interplay between words that you mentioned does not allow for the self-regeneration, self-organization, self-awareness, and growth that a human brain routinely accomplishes. Granted, but those features (except the self-awareness, maybe) are found in almost any biological constructs, and absent in almost all manufactured items. It’s a bit of an unfair comparison to include them in the mix, at least until we come up with bio-books. I mean, by that same token you could count the lack of senescence and the nigh-perfect similarity of each individual character in the “books are neater” column. If you want to include self-regeneration, organization and growth in your tally, that is to say the process by which the brain makes itself, then I demand that the library also include a printing press, the process by which books reproduce, and the Dewey Decimal System, the process by which they naturally organize ! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/74 "2012-02-01T19:07:19Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > The same can be said, too, about the brain. We know a \*tremendous lot \*about it. Every last cell is accounted for, measured and labelled. We know when they form, in which order, what causes them to go this or that way, to form this or that sub-system, what chemicals they exchange or output. We might not know what this bit here does, or how exactly it does what we’re quite convinced it does (and perhaps more importantly to the source of OP’s cite, how we could affect it from the outside without a chainsaw), but the mapping and fundamental reactions are pretty solidly understood. This is like saying we understand the weather because we understand atoms. We understand why the weather does what it does, and we even know in principle how to accurately model what it does at a higher-level than atom-by-atom based on fundamental principles rather than guesses. Some of the higher-level models are remarkably simple. No such analog of understanding exists for the brain. Brains are made of neurons. But saying we understand a brain because we understand neurons is like saying you understand Wittgenstein because you understand the atoms in the ink his books are written in. For a personality, say, our best models are things like Eliza, which of course are not based on any fundamental or unity of understanding. We currently have no higher-level model of how the brain works. Just like the car engine, where we have a model for how atoms work, but also a model hor how an engine works in terms of pressure and combustion and torque and so. We have no analogous understanding of the brain. > [@Kobal2](#): > > We just don’t know what to make of it all just yet. > Bear in mind however that we’ve been observing the weather a lot longer than we have the brain. And while it’s relatively easy to get live data on how the weather works, the better to analyse and understand it, when you jack live electrodes into someone’s head or hack off a bit of someone’s brain just to see what happens, the Luddites make all kinds of fuss. > > It’d probably be more justifiable to say that the brain is obscure rather than complex, really. Before we could assess its relative complexity, we’d have to know a lot more about what goes on in it than we do. The vast variety of human invention is a reflection of some ‘obscure’ but simple mechanism, rather than something worthy of being called ‘complex?’ The brain is more complex than weather, because we know a higher-level model of similar complexity is impossible. We know this because we can exhaustively search and eliminate all possible models below some level of algorithmic or mathematical complexity; we know we can’t model personality by a few coupled first or second order differential equations, for example. This doesn’t mean anything particularly deep or grandiose necessarily about the human brain. It simply means it is, as is intuitively obvious, pretty darn complex compared to most other physical systems (I cannot apply PV=NRT to understand its behavior, and so on, going up the chain of algorithmic complexity). And if focusing on the brain makes you uncomfortable out of some complex about human arrogance, consider that a flower, too, is also more complex than other arrangements of matter. Both a flower and a cloud of gas can be made up of the same atoms, so at the lowest level they have the same complexity. But the flower has more; the emergent behavior of the atoms can be modelled separately, and is much more complex than the behavior of an ideal gas. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/75 "2012-02-01T19:20:57Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > My English Lit teacher would be very angry at you right now 😛 Perhaps. That doesn’t mean that he or she is correct. 🙂 > [@](#): > > Granted, but those features (except the self-awareness, maybe) are found in almost any biological constructs, and absent in almost all manufactured items. True with regard to the first point, which is why I’d argue that most biological organisms are likewise incredibly complex. Somebody with no grasp of cellular biology might think otherwise, but this merely shows how much people fail to appreciate their tremendous complexity. As for “almost all manufactured items,” that’s nonsense. Most manufactured items do not exhibit self-regeneration, self-organization, or growth. If you could find these qualities in a brick, or a piece of plywood, or even the world’s greatest smartphone, then I think you’d have a point… but that simply isn’t the case. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/76 "2012-02-01T20:03:48Z")
I plead guilty to using the weasel words “almost all” instead of just “no” to pre-empt some nitpicking Doper, of which there are a few, from making it their mission to find one example somewhere before the night is through. ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/77 "2012-02-01T20:27:29Z")
> [@iamnotbatman](#): > > No such analog of understanding exists for the brain. Why not? > [@iamnotbatman](#): > > But saying we understand a brain because we understand neurons is like saying you understand Wittgenstein because you understand the atoms in the ink his books are written in. Wittgenstein probably would have written that. I understand all fifty words I typed in this post because I don’t understand all fifty-six words you typed that are in this post. The question is: Do you understand all one hundred six words in this post? > [@iamnotbatman](#): > > The brain is more complex than weather, because we know a higher-level model of similar complexity is impossible. What about the universe? ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/78 "2012-02-01T20:36:45Z")
Correcting something I said earlier… > [@JThunder](#): > > As for “almost all manufactured items,” that’s nonsense. Most manufactured items do not exhibit self-regeneration, self-organization, or growth. If you could find these qualities in a brick, or a piece of plywood, or even the world’s greatest smartphone, then I think you’d have a point… but that simply isn’t the case. I jumped the gun. I see now that **Kobal2** said that these qualities are ABSENT in almost all manufactured items. That’s precisely the point, though. They ARE absent, which is yet another reason for arguing that the human brain is more complex than a library or other man-made constructs. One doesn’t get to ignore data simply because it doesn’t support one’s conclusions. Earlier, **Kobal2** , you said, > [@](#): > > If you want to include self-regeneration, organization and growth in your tally, that is to say the process by which the brain makes itself, then I demand that the library also include a printing press, the process by which books reproduce, and the Dewey Decimal System, the process by which they naturally organize ! Again, that statement undermines your claim rather than supporting it. The human brain can grow, adapt, organize itself, and so forth. Library books do not print or organize themselves. Rather, they require external agents in order to do so. “It’s unfair!” one might say. “Libraries don’t have that ability, so if you want to consider these data points, then we should add a printing press and the Dewey Decimal System to the library too!” Once again though, that misses the point. These are NOT part of the library itself, and the library doesn’t get to rack up points based on features that it does not have. (As an aside, I’d like to point out that the Dewey decimal system is both obsolete and inadequate. It merely classifies books; the texts themselves must still be organized by human agents. Additionally, it has been mostly replaced by the Library of Congress classification system, so this reference is a few decades out of date.) ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/79 "2012-02-01T20:38:13Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > What about the universe? Based on the title of this thread, I thought were were talking about objects within the universe, not the universe itself. ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259/80 "2012-02-01T20:47:54Z")
> [@JThunder](#): > > Based on the title of this thread, I thought were were talking about objects within the universe, not the universe itself. In order to answer the question in the thread title we need to talk about objects within the universe, of course, and the universe itself, and, even, simulation of the universe. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-human-brain-the-most-complex-object-in-the-universe/611259.md?page=5)