The human brain is a supercomputer. All day long, it
processes amounts of information so large that they could cause the average
laptop to crash or overheat. If one were to take a moment to consider all of
the things that they experience through their senses, they would be tired out
in a matter of minutes. Take, for instance, your hands. At this moment, I can
see my two hands, my ten fingers, sprawled about my keyboard. I can see the
letters I am pressing down, I can feel the force of the keys pushing back up against
me, I can hear them click, I can feel my wrists resting on my desk. The
interaction of my hands with my keyboard sets off thousands of neurons, which
shoot electrical signals to my brain, which sends down commands. This process
is repeated thousands of times in a day, billions of times over the span of a
human life. As my brain is processing my interaction with the world, it
controls my movements, my heartbeat, breathing, emotions, etcetera. Even during
sleep, the brain is active, and while this activity fluctuates over the course
of the night, my brain causes vivid dreams and keeps me breathing. The brain is
a ceaseless workhorse.
Psychologists,
neurologists, psychiatrists, neuro-psychologists, and other –ists have studied –
or, tried to study – the brain for centuries. And yet, there is no doubt that
we know very little about the vast workings of the brain. There is, for
example, no consensus on the origins or mechanics of the mind. We all know that
we are alive, but no one knows how we know we are here. There are some theories
that consciousness is actually dark matter, an invisible, otherworldly type of
matter of which nothing is known, and that consciousness is a simply a
by-product of the neural connections in the brain. Under this latter theory,
people have stipulated that the Internet is aware of its existence. If a brain
is a series of connections humans are self-aware, and the Internet is a series
of connections, why can’t the Internet be self-aware?
The brain is a vast
unknown, up there in the lists of scientific mysteries along with black holes
and dark matter. People devote their entire lives to the study of the brain,
and 2nd Period Humanities would surely benefit from a week or two of
brain study
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