Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? Massive Parallelism
I recently realized the (obvious in hindsight) fact that general intelligence better that brute force doesn&#x27;t exist, as intelligence is equivalent to compression.<p>Given the recent discoveries about neurons using mRNA capsids to communicate [0] it&#x27;s not that farfetched to posit that we are really dna computers [1]. The processing time (for new problems) seems human-like: &quot;The slow processing speed of a DNA-computer (the response time is measured in minutes, hours or days, rather than milliseconds)&quot;<p>The evolutionary argument: as DNA computing is already used by microbes [2] how could the nervous system made of (relatively) dumb neurons compete with that? Synapses still make sense - as a way to request a rna packet and&#x2F;or inform that it&#x27;s coming and from where.<p>One neuron with capability of ~10M pattern matches per second (encoded in dna&#x2F;rna) would mean that the human brain executes ~2^60 pattern-matching operations per second, utilizing zettabytes of imperfectly copied data. Enough to brute force its way through lots of problems.<p>Memory as dna would explain high-level memory quirks: each read would be destructive, by splitting dna into rna, interacting with other rna under the presence of appropriate enzymes, then copying and disseminating the resulting rna, transforming the memory each time it&#x27;s retrieved.<p>It would also explain urban legends about people&#x27;s personalities changing to resemble their organ donors in some way - as a donor&#x27;s memory packets that somehow ended up on the donor&#x27;s organ and, with the help of immunosuppressants, managed to infect the receiver&#x27;s brain.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;d41586-018-00492-w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;d41586-018-00492-w</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;DNA_computing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;DNA_computing</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Microbial_intelligence" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Microbial_intelligence</a>