The brain has the capacity to store the entire content of the universe?!?!

Neuro

For the ultimate in woolly thinking, see:

www.enlightenment.ie

for gems such as:

The brain has the capacity to store the entire content of the universe.

Long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there were all of these little light beings just hanging out enjoying life in that joyful & timeless dimension. And then one day a very large, magnificent angel came to them. He had a very serious look on his face. He was looking for volunteers for a very important cosmic mission.

The Modern Physics view of God emphasises the connectedness of all beings. It becomes clear that to harm someone else is ultimately to harm yourself. This is not immediately obvious to people until the effect is magnified by the wrong behaviour of the many. Once this is understood, people are less likely to do harm to others. In terms of physics we are all part of the same energy field. It is a field of infinite energy which has existed for all time and will continue for ever. It is everywhere and it is every thing and it even existed before the Big Bang. It’s similarity to the attributes of God should not be ignored. Perhaps Modern Physics can become part of the curriculum for religious formation in the future. Then Theism and Pantheism can co-exist without conflict.

Syth

If so then my brain can store a copy of the universe, and hence a copy of your brain which is also storing a copy of the universe. But your brain also stores a copy of my brain, which has a copy of the universe. So I need to store the universe, the copy of the universe that's in your brain, and the copy of the universe that's in the copy of brain in your brain. And again and again ad infinitium.

Do these people not think before they write?

Goodshape

Well, as I understand the statement it's not supposed to be taken as literally as "this jug has the capacity to store a litre of water".

Think outside the box for a minute and realise that everything you know and experience, all the knowledge you have of the universe, is contained within your brain. This is not in any way saying that the physical properties of the universe can be stored in your own grey matter.. but who's to say that these physical properties exist at all, except that your brain tells you so.

Syth, your argument doesn't really stand up because what is in your brain is not in my universe, and visa-versa. My universe consists of the thoughts I have (contained within my brain) and the world I experience around me (processed, understood and stored within my brain).

Essentially, everyone's personal 'universe' is unique and contained exclusively within the confines of their own mind.

Accepting this philosophy, for me to cause harm to others would be to create extra strife in my universe - I would most likely experience guilt or fear of retribution, which I can very well do without.

Turley

My mind ran out of RAM memory a few months ago. Often I cannot remember where I place my keys. I would like to add a few magabits.

KCF

How about this:

Quantum Coherence in a convenient half-grapefruit size

Stark

The theory is like computers in a network. No one computer can store the entire contents of the network, and under normal usage the computer won't deal with most of the data on the network even though it is connected to it.

Similarly the theory goes that human brains exist as part of a larger network, each with our own "spaces" and with potential to access the entire knowledge of the universe (through techniques such as "remote viewing").

KCF

Stark wrote:

The theory is like computers in a network. No one computer can store the entire contents of the network, and under normal usage the computer won't deal with most of the data on the network even though it is connected to it.

Similarly the theory goes that human brains exist as part of a larger network, each with our own "spaces" and with potential to access the entire knowledge of the universe (through techniques such as "remote viewing").

Okay, I can see that human brains exist as part of a larger network (society) each with their own "spaces" (bodies) and with potential to access limited amounts of the knowledge stored in the network (through language and perceptual qualia). However, I don't think that's what you're saying.

You're talking about some form of non-lingustic/non-physical connectedness I take it, which presumably relies upon a mysterious force that is unknown to scientists and is only perceivable to self-declared authorities, who make money by flogging books of their wisdom. Now, I must admit that I'm not convinced by this theory. However, in fairness, I'll give you a chance. If you can "remotely view" the pattern on my boxer shorts today, I'll be persuaded.

As an aside, I think the persistent myth about the brain being able to store all the contents of the universe springs form a misunderstanding of the observation that there are more possible brain-states than there are atoms (or indeed planck cubes or anything else you care to mention) in the universe. Similarly, the myth about us using only 10% of our brain capacity springs from misinterpreting glia as neurons that we are not using.

robindch

> Quantum Coherence in a convenient half-grapefruit size

Vacuous credophile piffle, I'm afraid to say, though in a friendly shape.

What _you_ want is an Acme Klein Bottle, available from the one and only Cliff Stoll (yes, *that* Cliff Stoll), at http://www.kleinbottle.com. For an outlay of 30 euro or so, you too can be like me, the happy owner of a zero-volume, boundary-free manifold, capable of storing ... wait for it ... absolutely nothing!



- robin.

Syth

Goodshape wrote:

Well, as I understand the statement it's not supposed to be taken as literally as "this jug has the capacity to store a litre of water".
<snip />
Accepting this philosophy, for me to cause harm to others would be to create extra strife in my universe - I would most likely experience guilt or fear of retribution, which I can very well do without.

I agree 'universe' could be interpreted like that. But that means the original statement turns into "The brain has the capacity to store the entire content of itself", which is obvious. Most people, if they say the original statement would think universe.

Eoghan-psych

This is yet another of those "facts" about the brain that actually has some basis.

The idea most likely stems from the simple calculation of how many possible discrete patterns of connections the neural architecture can *theoretically* form. This calculation can very easily be used to show that the brain can theoretically represent a higher number of discrete arrangements than there are atoms in the universe. Obviously spurious, but a useful tool to illustrate the complexity of the brain.

The problem with extrapolating it as these wackos do is that the brain doesn't operate as discrete patterns - there are multiple redundancies, specialised areas, complex "digi-logue" arrangements etc etc etc that completely nullify the argument.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Eoghan

Goodshape wrote:

Well, as I understand the statement it's not supposed to be taken as literally as "this jug has the capacity to store a litre of water".

Zukustious

Neuro wrote:

In terms of physics we are all part of the same energy field. It is a field of infinite energy which has existed for all time and will continue for ever. It is everywhere and it is every thing and it even existed before the Big Bang.

Who believes this kind of stuff? In terms of physics my ass.

Eoghan-psych

Zukustious wrote:

Who believes this kind of stuff? In terms of physics my ass.

As a good rule of thumb, factual claims about "before the Big Bang" belong in the same place as "we only use 10% of our brain".

ISAW

When I read the quote two thoughts came to me.
[Hofstader mode on ] Actually three the third being the Universe was now two thoughts bigger. No three no four...
[Hofstader mode off]

First was the idea of representation and reality. Numbers for instance six vi 6 are representations of the number six. So the brain can store representations of external reality. Exactly what sort of information is encoded is a matter of debate.

Seconnd relates to capacity and numbers. How much information. I believe there are more possible combinations of DNA than there are atoms in the Universe. So one could claim that the neuron connections to store all the information we currently have stored elsewhere. But that in itself seems meaningless to me. But really BIG numbers astound me. I remember reading the idea on the largest recorded number i.e. the largest referred to in a paper. I came across Skewes Number. thats ten to the ten tot the ten to the ten to the two point something I think. what shocked me was if you had millimeter sized digits it would cover the surface of the Earth. But that is only the space needed to write it down and is nowhere near the size of the Number! think about that. ten has two digits but is related to ten things. A hundres three but related to much more. A million to much more but still only six zeros. image the immense size of a number with enough zeros to cover the Earth? After Number theory discovered the superskewes number I began to get frightened. Isnt the Reimann conjecture concerned with this?

yep : http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SkewesNumber.html
its about 10^10^10^10^3

And I remember the story i read it in now it is in the reference above "Skewered" by Asimov.

that number is so big if you took the amount of time for light to crosss a hydrogen atom as a unit small enough for something to happen and shuffeled all the atoms ( about one Hydrogen per cubic meter) in the Universe each time unit into every possible permutation variation for all those atoms and you did that for the entire history of the Universe until taday you would be of the right order of magnitude but still wouldnt reach the number.

Anyway we can always use maths to represent bigger amounts of information. We cant conceive of something big enough to store that amount of information though.
[Hofstader mode on]
So our mind is big enough to conceive even that which is impossible for it to store.

Dbones

we are the borg... you will be assimilated.
resitance is futile.