Is Understanding More Complex??
We take a sufficient amount of time for learning something but can that rate be increased for better performance.
From our school days, we are told to not just cram up the textbooks but try also to understand the given concepts. But we did not have that luxury and eventually, most of us ended up cramming up everything for the exams. And, eventually, this information that we copy-pasted on our brain wiped out like the volatile memories on a computer RAM. Thus, ultimately, we were back to our initial cranial capacity but this time, actually, with some good marks, which were sufficient enough to move us to the next grade.
I also had something similar going on with my academic life when I was younger but I soon realized that this was not the way. So, I tried a different approach for studying, to understand each concept mentioned in the textbooks, which actually made me smarter(???) but my marks varied inversely, as now I completely stopped studying for exams and I used to get lost in my own concepts and theories about this world. My curiosity took me off-syllabus and studying for schools became like an unwanted job, or maybe a forced job.
Well, anyway, I’m still studying, but many times I used to think that someday this tyranny will stop. When Brain-Computer Integrations(BCIs) will be successful and I will be able to connect with the internet and know everything about everything. This thought gave me hope for the future. But it had a fundamental flaw.
As I pondered more about BCIs, I began to realize how wrong I was about them. How my laziness for not studying made me ignorant of the basic fact about knowledge and understanding it.
What did I find out?
To know something doesn’t just mean to store the related data about that subject which is similar in sense to cramming. But to truly know something you have to understand it, consciously. Understanding is not simply storing that information, but also the capacity to somehow feel it and know that you know it. It requires a conscious alertness about that information that we have it in our brains.
-Francis Bacon
Understanding something usually takes time and requires your conscious involvement with that data your brain is processing. It is not a mere recording of facts, like a computer or any storage device does, but it is deeper than that.
Understanding is more comprehensive than intellect because it intuits truths that cautious intellect can get sight of, but never embrace like a sea-gazer who never plunges in. When we understand we have intellect on the shore and don’t need it and its crabbed analyses.
-David S. Jones
You can store thousands of bytes of random data on a computer, but that doesn’t mean that the computer understands that data as we do. Even the most powerful supercomputers of today don’t understand the data they play with on a regular basis, enough though they are very efficient in handling those huge datasets. And it gets more interesting from here.
If you give some input to a computer, it generates the required output and you conclude that it is working properly. Even if the computer passes the Turing test and you are convinced that this computer has started to understand you or that it has got self-aware of itself, doesn’t necessarily mean that the computer understands whatever input you give to it. It is still dead and perhaps the program is simulating being self-aware and alive. The Chinese Room Argument is an epitome for this.
The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.
-Francis Bacon
Imagine This
Suppose you are in the future, 20 to 30 years ahead from now. The connectome project, which is about mapping every nerve cell in our brain, has been successful for decades now and we have a complete neural mapping of our brains. We can probably know all our strengths and weaknesses hidden in our neural framework. From that, we can enhance our mental capacities even more than ever. We can work in that particular field in which our brains have more prowess. We can get rid of all our cognition biases and we will be able to think clearly for the time. And now think about a device capable of connecting us with everyone and everything on this planet wirelessly, with really powerful connectivity, like the internet but on steroids. So technically speaking, we’ll have access to each and every information generated on this planet (within the bounds of the internet) and every human will look like a neuron on the face of the Earth. Some predict that if such a future takes place, the whole planet will start functioning as a brain with interconnected neurons, the neurons being us humans sending and receiving data as real neurons do. In such a scenario, the whole planet will rise as a giant superorganism and we humans will be just some cells of it, in the same way, single-celled microbes congregated millions of years ago. Well maybe this will be the new direction for life altogether and we humans were just some passengers in that journey(?).
Well, not that quick. Having access doesn’t necessarily mean that someone would actually put the effort in accessing particular information. I mean today’s world is not completely connected, but it is quite relatable. We all have internet connections (well at least you are having it for now) and it lets us access thousands of books, blogs and research papers available for free, but still, we see people who prioritise more about the likes on their posts than anything else. Overall we don’t see an exponential increase in intelligence after the Internet’s invention. So what is exactly wrong with this world.
Even if you get a whole library of books or an internet connection to your PC or a connection directly to your brain, you will have to undergo the conscious process of understanding things to grasp them properly and to implement that knowledge somehow in your life. You can’t just have storage of this data on your brain to completely grasp everything. You have to still undergo that slow process of understanding things which our ancestors have been doing for centuries, at least some of them.
“The great art of learning is to understand but little at a time.”
-John Locks
That’s how our brain works. It has to make some sense about the new data by comparison or relation with previous models in your brain’s memories and then conclude that it has got it. Our neurons can communicate at a speed of around 400 km per second, fast but not fast enough. Also looking at our brain’s processing power, it is too slow to get or focus on everything it observes. And added with that we have an additional disadvantage of our mood swings which make us sometimes faster but many times miserably slower. Hence today we try to shift our focus on the most important things by giving our menial or mentally demanding jobs to smart machines.
What is the use of ever-growing technology then if it doesn’t enhance our minds?
Well, it’s not that technology will not make any difference. It will help in the speed and provide you with the data as quickly as you want but understanding that information with your conscious involvement is, well, your job in the end. Like the famous idiom about feeding the horse, where you bring the horse to the grass but cannot force it to eat, in the same way, technology has brought us very close to the information but it is our job now to consume it properly. Are you hungry for knowledge?
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch (right?)
Conclusion
In conclusion, we humans are not made for high-speed data processing or for super-efficient workflow. Our brains, even though were fast enough to survive the Savannas and dodge a couple of lions, they are not quite helpful now. We can still try to improve them by daily practising, but there still remains that bioorganic limit. Hence, until we don’t have any non-biological silicon brains coming up we are stuck with our natural brains. But don’t forget that even though we will create these artificial brains someday, our these natural brains were made completely by a dumb evolutionary process, which occurred randomly on a dumb planet in a strange part of the universe, which actually doesn’t understand it in any way (or does it?).
(P.S.;
This doesn’t mean that machines will never truly understand data, because they will, after some time in the future, after the so-called Singularity has been reached.)
