About the limitations of natural intelligence and how we can live with it further

Today, it becomes obvious that the human brain has completely obvious natural limitations and basically works, which is called "to the fullest." I consider the field of mental labor naturally. The myth that the brain uses only 10% of its potential is just a myth . And, apparently, with training and (or) medical methods, the quality of intelligence can be raised only very limitedly. Modern science increasingly agrees that with the current structure of the brain, we cannot be smarter than we are .

In my opinion, this is a very serious, and possibly the main problem of the further development of mankind. If in the engineering and technical plan we are developing quite tolerably, then in the scientific and fundamental everything is far from so good. Despite all our greatness, we are still helpless in front of cancer, speed, runny nose, and I'm not talking about aging. The main problem of modern physics: the "General theory of elementary particles", which would seem to be about to be solved during the entire second half of the last century, is still unresolved and no clearance is visible, although enormous attempts were made and are being made. In mathematics, things are no better . This topic is very well disclosed in an article by Brian Davis “Where does mathematics go?” :

In 1875, any competent mathematician could fully grasp the evidence of all the theorems that existed at that time in a few months. In 1975, a year before the four-color theorem was proved, this was no longer a question, however, some mathematicians could still theoretically figure out the proof of any known theorem. By 2075, many areas of pure mathematics will be built on the use of theorems, the proofs of which can not be fully understood by any of the mathematicians living on Earth - either alone or through collective efforts.

And a similar situation in almost all areas of modern science.

The main reason is, of course, the imperfection of the human brain, even the most ingenious. Well, we simply do not drag out the tasks that modern science sets before us. Moreover, in addition to the obvious lack of “speed”, the brain has more fundamental limitations. Try to lower the fourth perpendicular, and you will immediately understand what I mean. It is sometimes insurmountably difficult for a person to work with theories that operate with more than three dimensions. Sometimes it seems to me that the Creator intentionally mounted this fuse in our brains so that we would not go where we should not. And when you try to remove this fuse, you can really fly off the coils and such facts are known to medical science. Or take, for example, time. We basically cannot imagine ourselves outside the context of time. And sometimes it is necessary. For instance,until the big bang is simply incorrect.

So what do we do now if the frequency of alpha rhythms of the brain is not possible to increase? Some options are still available.

1. Parallelization

This is the most obvious, simplest and most widely used method. Most of human activity lends itself very well to parallelization and people naturally actively use it. In particular, engineering tasks, as a rule, parallelize perfectly. However, there are areas, and very serious ones, where large problems arise with the parallelization of tasks. This is usually associated with creativity. For example, it is unlikely that 10 Leonardo Da Vinci would have written “The Mona Lisa” 10 times better. Or 10 Tolstoys would write “War and Peace” 10 times faster. Fundamental research is akin to creativity. In fact, take a look at the key scientific breakthroughs of humanity. As a rule, they are all connected with one person, and not with a group of persons. Newton's laws, Einstein's theory of relativity, etc. If in scientific terms there are paired names, then usually this is not due to the fact that these people worked together on this, but to the fact that they were dealing with the same problem at the same time: “Boyle-Mariotte Law”, “Fermi-Dirac Statistics”, “ Newton – Leibniz formula, etc. That is, parallelization can not always help us and we need something else.

2. Improving the brain

2.1. The simplest and most obvious way is evolution, which at the moment is actually happening. Perhaps it’s worth the wait a couple of million years and we will become much smarter and those tasks that are now unbearable for us will seem completely childish to our distant descendants. Great, if not for the word "wait."

2.2. We are improving our brain using biotechnological methods, for example, genetic engineering methods. Why not? Just not yet matured yet. Not matured in different ways: in moral, ethical, legal, of course, technical, etc.

3. Assistive devices

3.1. External devices. First of all, of course, computers (stationary, mobile, super, etc.). It is obvious that modern information technologies significantly save time in the scientific and technical activities of man, freeing him for those areas where the brain has nothing to replace. And this area in the foreseeable future, of course, will continue to develop at a tremendous pace.

3.2."Embedded devices." Well, whoever would like to have a mathematical coprocessor in their head, without side effects, of course, who could solve complex arithmetic problems in a split second at your request? And arithmetic is just one detail from a wide range of potential opportunities. At the moment, quite intensive scientific research is being carried out in this direction, but the practice, apparently, is not far off.

4. Artificial Intelligence

Oh yeah! This is a universal weapon with unlimited possibilities. In addition to potentially significantly greater power compared to natural intelligence, there is every reason to believe that AI will be able to calmly circumvent the limitations described above regarding more than three dimensions or time context. There is no doubt that artificial intelligence can seriously help us deal with the current issues of basic sciences and advance us extraordinarily.

However, such a formidable force inspires us with such obvious fears, sometimes turning into panic horror . Hoping for the first law of robotics (a robot cannot harm a person or, through inaction, allow a person to be harmed) in the case of real intelligence, it makes no sense. Indeed, if we define “the ability to solve problems of arbitrary subjects” as the definition of intelligence, then it turns out that the intellect is able, if necessary, to solve the problem of how to circumvent some kind of law of robotics or something else. The only thing you can be at least somehow sure of is that he will not circumvent the laws of nature.

The main question is, who will artificial intelligence be for us? Friend, enemy, colleague or king? An extraordinary amount of attention has already been devoted to this, more will be devoted, but this is already a very special topic.