On the limitations of natural intelligence and how we live with it

Today it becomes obvious that the human brain has completely obvious natural limitations and basically works, which is called “to the full extent”. I look at the realm of mental work naturally. The myth that the brain uses only 10% of its potential is just a myth . And, apparently, by training and (or) medical methods, the quality of intelligence can be raised only very limitedly. Modern science more and more 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 for the future development of mankind. If, in engineering and technical terms, we are developing quite tolerably, in scientific and fundamental things are not so good. Despite all our greatness, we are still helpless before cancer, aids, runny nose, I'm not talking about aging. The main problem of modern physics: "The General Theory of Elementary Particles", which seemed to be about to be solved during the entire second half of the last century, is still unsolved and there is no gap, although enormous attempts have been made and undertaken. In mathematics, things are no better . Very well this topic is revealed in the article by Brian Davis “Where is the mathematics going?” :

In 1875, any competent mathematician could fully assimilate 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 out of the question; however, individual mathematicians could still theoretically deal with the proof of any known theorem. By 2075, many areas of pure mathematics will be built on the use of theorems, the proof of which cannot be fully understood by any of the mathematicians living on Earth, either alone or by 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 brilliant. Well, we just simply do not pull the tasks that modern science sets before us. And besides the obvious lack of "speed" in the brain, there are more fundamental limitations. Try to lower the fourth perpendicular, and you will immediately understand what I mean. Sometimes it is simply overwhelmingly difficult for a person to work with theories that operate with more than three dimensions. Sometimes it seems to me that the Creator specially installed this fuse in our brain so that we would not go where we shouldn't go. 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. In principle, we cannot imagine ourselves outside the context of time. And sometimes it is necessary. For example, modern science assumes that before the big bang, there was no time at all as such, therefore, to talk about what happened before the big bang is simply incorrect.
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So what do we do now, if the frequency of brain alpha rhythms is not possible to increase? Some of the options that still exist.

1. Parallelization

This is the most obvious, simple and widely used method. Most of the human activity lends itself to parallelization very well, and people naturally actively use this. In particular, engineering tasks, as a rule, are parallelized perfectly. However, there are areas, and very serious areas where big problems arise with parallelization of tasks. This is usually associated with creativity. For example, hardly 10 Leonardo da Vinci would write “Gioconda” 10 times better. Or 10 Fat would write War and Peace 10 times faster. Fundamental scientific research is akin to creativity. In fact, take a look at the key scientific breakthroughs of humanity. As a rule, they are all associated 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 it is not related to the fact that these people worked together on this, but to the fact that they dealt with the same problem at the same time: “Boyle’s Law — Mariotte” , “Fermi-Dirac statistics”, “Newton's formula — Leibniz”, etc. That is, paralleling does not always help us and needs something else.

2. Improving the brain

2.1. The simplest and most obvious way is the evolution, which is actually happening at the moment. It may be worth waiting for a couple of million years and we will become much smarter and those tasks that are now very heavy for us will seem completely childish to our distant descendants. It would be great if it were not for the word "wait."

2.2. We are improving our brain by biotechnological methods, for example, by methods of genetic engineering. Why not? Only not yet matured yet. They did not grow in different senses: in moral and ethical, legal, of course technical, etc.

3. Auxiliary devices

3.1. External devices. First of all, of course, computers (stationary, mobile, super, etc.). Obviously, modern information technologies significantly save time in human science and technology, freeing it for areas where the brain has nothing to replace. And this area in the foreseeable future, of course, will continue to develop at a gigantic pace.

3.2. "Embedded devices". Well, whoever wants to have a mathematical coprocessor in his head, without side effects, of course, who could solve arithmetic problems in a split second? And arithmetic is only one part of the widest range of potentialities. At the moment, there are quite intensive scientific research in this direction, however, 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 more power than natural intelligence, there is every reason to believe that AI can safely bypass the limitations described above, relating to more than three dimensions or time context. There is no doubt that artificial intelligence can seriously help us to deal with current issues of the basic sciences and to move us extraordinarily.

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

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