EVEN RECOGNISED COMPUTER “NERDS” (AND GENUINE EXPERTS IN I.T.) MUST ASK THEMSELVES THE QUESTION, OFTEN: “JUST HOW GOOD IS THE HUMAN BRAIN?” IS IT THE WORLD’S MOST IMPRESSIVE “COMPUTER,” EVEN?
There is compelling evidence to suggest that it still is … despite all the “experts” telling us that as a species, we draw on less than 10% of our personal mental capacities… and I don’t doubt that assessment in the slightest. (Some suggest less than 5%, even).
The older I get, the more I am in awe of what the human brain is capable of – and that feeling of awe has been strengthened by my experiences in cobbling together several hundred thousand words in recalling (unprompted), and recording, memories back to my earliest childhood days, back to the mid-tolate1940s. And considering that I was born in 1942 that (I reckon) is a pretty fair effort.
The recall factor has stunned even me, on numerous occasions. I don’t claim any great level of intelligence to explain this; it just happened. But how is it possible for someone – anyone – to recall, so clearly, people and events dating back to the times when they (in this case, me) were only a handful of years old? It stuns me!
A FEW EXAMPLES ……
Just today, I was chasing up some details (on my man-made modern laptop computer) on a couple of old rugby league-playing mates who made the League “big time”, playing in the Sydney league in the 1960s and 70s. Inadvertently, I tapped into historical records of Sydney RL players back into the 1940s and 50s. Nothing “big deal” about that….. but what did surprise me greatly was that I recalled personal details(even where they came from and what clubs they played for) about players around the late 40s who were my “idols” when I first started playing footy at the age of six. That was when my reputation as a rugby league devotee – or “tragic”, as often described today – began.
• Throughout the scribblings of my family history and memoirs, I recalled (in quite specific and clear detail) incidents that occurred before I had even become of school-age (5 years, at that stage)….and that’s 73 + years ago, now
• Out of the “blue”, I recalled making (in my early-tomid primary school days) a boyhood version of today’s modern radio……a crystal set…..and lying in bed listening (late at night) to broadcasts of rugby league matches out of Brisbane and Sydney – and even Australia v England cricket Tests, out of England.
Someone much smarter than me (I don’t remember who!) told me how to make the crystal set radio and I just did what I was told. I didn’t understand, then, how and why it worked…. and I still don’t know. My brain just “clicked in” and produced the results, and so my experiences (and knowledge) of my two strongest sporting “loves”, rugby league and cricket, grew…..to linger for another 70+ years.
All this tells me that the brain “experts” are right in suggesting that we draw on less than 10% of our brains’ capacities …and I reckon that certainly applies to me!.
As an invention of “modern man”, computers need the input of human brains to record, store and recall the facts and events punched into them(by humans). So who punches the “what, where, when, how, and why” of our life’s experiences and memories into our brains for later recall, so extensively and so accurately? THINK ON IT!