We are basically in agreement then, but I don’t think it is at all fair to frame this as “Our ego tells us it must be incredibly complicated since we haven’t figured it out yet.” And believe me, as someone who previously started a thread arguing that I don’t believe I am “conscious” (I still don’t), I don’t have an “ego” in this fight ;). The answer depends on definitions, and for many definitions I would argue it is pretty easy, given reasonable assumptions such as naturalism, to at least put some impressive lower bounds on brain complexity which are higher than other “non-thinking” objects in the universe. If you define complexity in algorithmic informational terms, for example, you can consider the compressibility of its output, or its ability to solve chess or math problems, etc. I’m just saying that it is reasonable to assume, given our current understanding, that certain aspects of the brain are more complicated than other less-organized objects in the universe, from atoms to nebula, which can’t, for instance, solve the quadratic equation.
It seems to follow relatively simple rules. We can model it and correctly predict its behavior to many decimal places for a wide range of energetic regimes. We don’t know everything, sure, but your above statement is silly.
We don’t even know how to predict the *weather *on our own one planet further than a couple days ahead at the most. And we know more or less every last thing about the weather - how it works, what causes it, what forces influence it. It’s just too goddamn chaotic and self-influencing to figure out for real.
So yeah, asserting that we can correctly predict the behaviour of a Universe we haven’t even mapped comprehensively (or know the boundaries of, if any actually exist) seems like a bit of a stretch to this layman.
We’re pretty close on this in a lot of ways. The variance may be definitional or paradigmic. I think computers are concious already, and conciousness is not that big of a deal, it’s that ego thing that makes it seem complicated 
I’ve heard this statement made in far more strident contexts and I was intending to react to the concept rather than this particular reference. Context isn’t really an excuse to baselessly speculate on a topic you are effectively 100% ignorant of. On the other hand, Gary Greenberg may be a bisexual myopic dwarf with a foot fetish, so he can do what he wants.
That’s a hell of a “probably” you threw in there. Name one definition and present an evidence based, statistically reasonable argument to support your assertion. Keep in mind that nearly everything in our experience comes from one planet, in one star system, in one galaxy. I’ll be merciful and restrict this conversation to the observable universe.
I’ll consider it dealt with.
I think we can all cheerfully concede that “most complex object in the universe” is far too ambiguous to deal with, but those denying the brain’s complexity are ill-informed. I’ve actually read quite a bit about the brain. I’m rather certain the Doper who wrote “We might find it to be deceptively simple some day” has not.
The brain is complex from several different perspectives. I’ll just mention one feature which intrigued me when I heard of it.
Among many distinct neuron types, there is a peculiarly shaped one in thalamus with a tripod form. One branch receives input redirected from one ear, another from the other ear. Presumably this neuron participates in sound direction location, but details are unknown – or at least were still unknown when I read brain research journals for fun some decades ago.
Some computer scientists build simulated neural networks with a few hundred “synapses” and don’t have a clear understanding of how their own-designed networks make decisions. Human brain has about a quadrillion synapses, IIRC, or thereabouts.
I don’t bother reading things about how the brain doesn’t work, which is all that’s out there. Your seven blind men and an elephant approach isn’t going to get you there.
I think the only reason we make that proclamation is that the brain is what we have the most intimate knowledge of, even if that knowledge isn’t rigorous. 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). There’s no denying it’s complex, but I think it appears more complex because we’re so unavoidably tied to it, there’s nothing else we can quite mess with like the brain. Even if you’re in a dark room, you can still reason about your mind, so it’s no wonder we have so many corner cases, scenarios, and questions about it.
I think it’s like that thing where experts often feel like they don’t know much in their field, while laymen think they do; because the experts are well-read enough to know what they don’t know. The same, I think, with our brains, we’re so familiar with them compared to other objects that we know how little we know because we observe them work every moment of our lives.
Oh, I’ll readily agree the brain is weird and fascinating (and breaks down in even more fascinating ways). I merely object to the smug notion that it is (or even could be) the most weird and fascinating thing EVAH.
We know exactly how to predict the weather. We just don’t have enough measuring devices and enough processor cycles. We also know how the weather works. We understand a tremendous amount about weather, including what causes it and what forces influence it. We understand chaotic systems too. We can understand the systems while also understanding the computational difficulties due to sensitivity to initial conditions.
But at what point can you truly say we “understand” something? We have a pretty good knowledge of physics, oh sure, some big holes, but generally we have a good understanding on the scales that are practical to day to day life. Can I say that, by extension, we understand everything that happens in the world on a macro level because we understand the physics behind it? After all, if we had nigh-infinite computational power we could probably get a pretty good simulation going.
But that would be silly, just because I understand physics doesn’t mean I really understand automobiles. Sure, physics is a big part of understanding automobiles, but to really understand most things in our world in a meaningful way you have to be able to work with it in a way that doesn’t require infeasible amounts of equipment and processor cycles. Just because I could construct an atom-by-atom representation of an automobile doesn’t really mean much about whether or not I understand why I need my carburetor to run it.
Maybe weather is understand to a good level (I don’t know enough about meteorology to really comment). I just think that in general it’s silly to say that we understand something because we understand the deep, low level principles behind them.
This whole thread is plagued with Definitional Disorder.
I already gave one of many possible examples earlier in the thread. Under the umbrella of definitions in algorithmic information theory I would perhaps define complexity of a system in terms of how compressible the information is that comes out of its emergent properties. For example, can you come up with an algorithm that models human thought? You can certainly put lower bounds on such an algorithm. The algorithm is obviously more complex than 5 print hello goto 5, for example. Etc. With this definition it is in fact rather trivial that the human brain is the most complicated (leaving aside putting multiple brains together and calling them a single object – that’s why I might throw the word ‘density’ around) object in the universe. It’s all in definitions, buddy.
I agree. I think we “understand” weather not directly because we understand atoms, but because we understand the interplay of sunlight, thermodynamics, chemical reactions, evaporation, geography, and the composition of the atmosphere. We understand that the sun heats the earth and hot air rises and the rotation of the earth causes coriolis forces and water evaporates at a rate depending on the pressure and humidity and temperature and condenses depending on the same, and so on and so forth. There are a few scattered phenomena we don’t completely understand yet, but we have the basic idea. Much of this does ultimately come from the fact that we do understand atoms, and can “build our way up” by figuring out how large groups of atoms behave in different circumstances. The brain, however, is not just a large statistical ensemble of atoms with some pressure and temperature and so on. It is an incredibly complex web of delicate relationships that seems to exhibit strong emergence; it supervenes on its components (this, by the way, is another way of defining the brain’s complexity in comparison with the rest of the universe).
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.
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.
I don’t see it as “masturbatory”. We are not responsible for the complexity of our brains. I see it as marvelling at what nature (or God if you like that sort of thing) has produced. Billions of networked neurons, systems to control every part of the human body. Just think how impressive it is even to be able to catch a ball someone has thrown at you. And perhaps we can have some idea of how complex the human brain must be by comparing it to what our computers can do. We’re so far away from being able to replicate some of the things brains can do. But then brains can’t do everything computers can do either, so perhaps in order to simulate a brain we just need a different approach, not a more complex one.
I don’t think the original comment we’re debating is meant to be taken as a hard fact with every word rigidly defined. It just sounds like something of a soundbite aimed at the layman. I see nothing wrong with that. I take it to mean, essentially, “Based on what we know now, I believe the human brain is the most impressive object* that exists, based on what it can achieve, how well it can achieve it and the amazing number of interconnected parts which somehow create consciousness among other things, using just electrical signals and chemical processes.”
*“Object” again meaning what all of us understand it to mean when we’re not being pedantic. We all use this word without qualification and expect the meaning to be understood by a reasonable person.
Essentially I think the word “complex”, in this instance, is not just about how it achieves things but what it achieves.
I found a similar topic on the Snopes message board. This post perhaps sums up my thoughts better than I have. Note the points about feedback:
In order to simulate a brain we just need to simulate the universe.
Even if we grant that a skyscraper has more components than a human brain (and I’m not willing to accept that claim without a thorough analysis), others have already pointed out the flaws in such thinking. Complexity is not determined by the mere number of components. If it were, then a barren strip of sandy beach would be more complex than an intricately constructed sand castle.
Well now we are defining complexity as information (not an unreasonable definition, actually) - in the scientific sense of the word. The human brain certainly has a very high level of information, depending on how many of the specific connections between neurons actually “matter”.
We still need to define “object” though before we can get anywhere. Otherwise I’d say a large library (and the books it contains), has more complexity than a single human brain, to give just one example.
The human brain has about 100 billion neurons alone — and that’s not counting glial cells, blood vessels, and other attendant components. The world’s largest library, the Library of Congress, hasless than 135 million books 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.