The Brain's Bandwidth

The Brain’s Bandwidth

12 February 2013

We all are familiar with the limited bandwidth our service provider offers us and how we must either be patient during slow downloads or pay a lot for a more speedy connection. This is indeed one of the continuing frustrations with using the internet.

However, few of us consider the brain’s bandwidth. Yes, the brain can handle only so much information per unit of time supplied from our senses which are themselves bandwidth limited. How quickly we can assimilate information into our consciousness is a major aspect of what we consider intelligence. It is also essential to our well-being in certain dangerous circumstances. How quickly we can receive, understand and react to stimulus is the brain’s bandwidth. Unfortunately, there is no Moore’s Law for our gray matter. Our only hope is to genetically engineer a better brain or the more likely solution to pass the function off to a personal integrated computer, our own PIC.

Neuroscience has already discovered that our actions take place before we are aware of them. Our arm has started to move before we think we have told it to move or we have already chosen a color before we can think of that color and click on it. Does this imply that our consciousness has even a lower bandwidth than our lower functioning brain? This is all very fascinating stuff. How well do we really know ourselves? We all feel so certain we do know our own inner self. Science is telling us differently. This is like the physical world. We think we see a solid brick but in fact we see a force field which is mostly a material void with atoms spaced far apart from each other. And so too is our brain made of atoms with great voids between them.

In physical strength we long ago overcame our puny muscles with far more powerful machines. With the coming of computers many “mental” functions are done far better by silicon than by neurons. How long will it be, if ever, when a human conceived device will surpass the instigator of that device; when our computational machine surpasses the ability of our molecular brains in all aspects? Is that a scary contemplation or a marvelous dream?

It is my hope and belief that as the world population gets more educated and information is made ubiquitous for all, we will live ever better lives. As more of us are freed from providing the mundane necessities of life we will continually increase the satisfactions of life. Civilizations have been moving in that direction for millennia albeit by a very crooked path replete with switch backs and circularities. Imagine if the brain’s bandwidth could be increased as it is in cyberspace how fast life could change. Suppose a large segment of society could spend its time just thinking how to make life better and with each new iteration our super brains could accurately see the outcome of our intention. It is as hard to imagine what that future could be like as it was for our grandfathers to imagine what our everyday texting and email, our Twitter and Facebook posts, our encyclopedic searches are for us today.

I recently did a Google search on the highest IQs ever recorded. There are really some incomprehensible brains in the world. The scores amazed me. I have been a critic of IQ scores for many, many years. Still I was amazed. For example: Chris Langan, USA 243;Paul Johns, UK 240; Andreas Gunnarsson, Sweden 235; Thomas R. A. Wolf, Germany 235; Evangelos G. Katsioulis, Greece 235; ; Rolf Mifflin, USA 238; Scott Durgin, USA 235 . Even if one is skeptical of IQ testing, many of these people finished university at astoundingly young ages where they were competing with other exceptional people. Kim Ung-young was enrolled in high school as a four year old when he scored 200 on an IQ test designed for much older children. That is both awe inspiring and very intimidating. And his IQ was almost modest compared to some of the others mentioned above.

When mankind invented the atomic bomb we made a machine that was so much more powerful than any human is that it challenges our understanding. Now we are on the way to making a brain substitute that is in like manner that much more powerful than our natural selves. And in the wings is waiting the same increase in magnitude in human biology. The gods we are inventing now are infinitely greater than those puny gods of our history. Zeus or Elohim, Om or Allah, they all just promised great power and knowledge. Our new high bandwidth brain will out shine them all with actual accomplishments not just dead, deceitful deeds.

We live in interesting times.