HOW DOES HUMAN BRAIN THINK AND WHY IS HUMAN BRAIN BETTER THAN A COMPUTER, HOW OUR IMPERFECTIONS MAKES US BETTER THAN COMPUTER

What is an idea, what is the thought, how do we think the great and new ideas that are worth spreading? In this blog, I want to show you what is going on in our mind when you use the information to give Rise to new thoughts and this is important because information is all around us. Many people think it all starts with data, data the resource of 21 century. Data is everywhere. Companies collect our data we do data analysis, But In fact data itself is pretty simple, just a collection of letters and numbers. Science you can process electronically but have no meaning. You can measure data but you cannot measure an idea. Because when are you really creative or innovative? when you have thousand thoughts or only one the real game changer, so may be information is more important and we have so many tools nowadays to acquire information like smartphones, mobile devices, the Internet everywhere but never mix up information with having an idea or knowledge because you can Google information but you cannot Google the idea. Having an idea acquiring knowledge, understanding staff, this is what is happening in your mind when you use the information to change the way you think. So what is that kind of thinking? Well, this is just the surface of what is going on in your mind when you actually think, most of the things go on subconsciously which makes the things dame hard to investigate but even more Interesting. So let's zoom in the brain and check out what is going on when we think. Many people think the brain is like a supercomputer. Like the ultimate calculating engine, it is supposed to be extremely fast, super connected and highly accurate. When you have something on your mind, like right now hopefully, a picture or an image or something like that. You can see it very sharp and precise and switch very easily much faster than a computer right. A computer you can put on your desktop easily calculates 3.4billion times a second. Brain cells are much slower and only do 500 operations maximum speed, computers don't do any mistakes. The rough estimation is one ever in Trillion operations and brains probably you know that from your personal life are much more error-prone and do mistakes A billion times as often and computers you can plug in your Internet and you are connected with the world contrary to the brain because the brain is 99% self-oriented. Most of the nerve fibers never get outside of your skull, most of the brain cells never see what is going on in reality.

                   So from this perspective, you have to say "okay the brain is everything but perfect. It is lame it is lousy, and it is selfish and it still works. Look around you, working brains you will find wherever you will look, more or less but still each one of you has the power to outperform every computer system by a very simple experiment. I can show you in a minute. So what do you see in below picture?

A face you might say, totally correct. I could just say it is a collection of fruits and vegetables, but you see a face. Now what's interesting is not that you do it, but how fast you do that. Because when your brain cells are really that slow, you can only do like 20, 30, 40 operations within that split second. Computer software needs many more steps, thousands, even millions of steps to come to the same result. This leads us to the fundamental principle of how we think. Because it’s totally different from anything we know of in our world. So how would a computer approach this kind of problem? Well, computers use algorithms. Algorithms are basically stepwise recipes telling you what to do. So when a computer faces a certain problem, for instance, recognize a face or solve An equation or whatsoever, the basic principle goes like this; You have input, then you process that input according to the algorithm, finally reaching an output. Input processing output. That's great, that is great when you don't do any mistakes because when you do a mistake, in the beginning, you are screwed at the end. That is why the computer sometimes breaks down and end up on a blue screen.
Like this what a sad face, by the way, poor guy. Computers breakdown brains do not break down. Unless you apply some external force or alcohol or something like that, but usually brains are very robust and that is because we think with a trick. When an input hits out eyes, the input is processed by the sensory cell in our eyes, and they get actuated and actuate the neighbors in the neural network. So this is like a simplified model of your brain in action. You have to agree for didactic reasons, I drastically oversimplified that model of your personal brain at least I hope so. But you still see the basic principle. Brain cells are dumb on their own, cannot do anything much. But If you have a lot of them, you will end up with something we call an activity pattern, an activity state of that specific neural network and this activity pattern

This is what we call as thought. Big difference to a computer, the brain does not distinguish between processing an output because processing the information is the thought itself. That is kind of tricky but maybe it is similar to an orchestra. If you look at an orchestra from outside, seeing all the musicians setting next to each other but not playing any music you have no idea what so ever malady this orchestra is able to play. Just like the brain when you look at the brain from outside you have no clue what so ever thoughts this system is able to think. In an orchestra, the melody emerges when the musicians start to play with each other and synchronize themselves so the music the melody is among players just like the thought in the brain is among the brain cells when they synchronize with each other. So the thought is not located anywhere, a thought is how the brain cells interact and how they process the information. That is different to a computer because no matter what kind of processing the computer uses whether it is algorithmic or a deep learning network or whatever fancy method we will come up with in future it will always be input processing output without mistakes hopefully. But if you don't do any mistakes you just end up at the place you're programmed for but nowhere you. Computers are intelligent but intelligence is nothing special, intelligence means that fallow the rules as fast and efficient as possible, but not to change rules. No super intelligent computer will ever rule the world because intelligence is not enough. You need to be a rule breaker a game changer, you need to be crazy and creative too and it is the mistake in our thinking, not the perfection that separates us from the non-creative machines. What do I mean by mistake, well it means that we can come up with a new thought, a new activity pattern without knowing before whether this is correct or not. Slightly differently activated we get a new pattern a new thought but we don't know whether this one is correct or not. Which why we fail we do it again but there is no objective criteria for a good idea. Well, there is one thing when is an idea a good when somebody else says this is a good idea. But this social interaction, this social feedback, this try and error, this social practice cannot be digitized right now and that is one reason why truly new ideas will stay analogous in our future. You see that this kind of thinking gives us a great advantage when it comes to creating new ideas, and we call that special type of thinking "Concept thinking" or "categorized thinking" and instead of explaining the theoretical background and explaining what's behind that, I'll give you an example. How you create new ideas: have a look towards below given picture and tell me do you think this is a chair?

Okay great, I'm sure the answer will be yes. Now do you think these are chairs too?

Alright now, do you think these are also chair?

Very well now here is the task do you think these are chairs too? Well, 99% of people given this task think also same that these too are chairs, but why? Why do you think that plastic ball with three stumps is a chair? Well, this is the big difference between the computer world and the brain world. Now what you did in this problem is called deep learning, you give a self-learning algorithm a gazillion of images and a couple of 100 images of chairs and then it analyses the whole data and says with 98% certainty that a chair is an object with four legs a seat and a backrest. But we don't do that. We understand that chair is not a special shape object but something you can sit on and once you understood that you see chairs everywhere, you can create new chairs with new designs and features. Here is another example of how you do that basically. Computers learn but learning is nothing special because Animals learn, blackbirds learn, dolphins learn, elephants learn, computers learn but we understand. Deep learning is great but deep understanding is better, because when you learn something you can unlearn it but once you understood it you can't de-understand it again. Because understanding means that you have changed the way you process information and since processing is One and the same in our brain, we understand very fast on the spot. As i said another example: well no computer is able to fallow that problem, but you're able to understand it within a minute. I'm not a good illustrator at all but it should be enough. I say that figure(I) is a flower

If figure(I) this is a flower then what is figure(II), a tree. If that is a flower and that is tree what could figure(III) be? A garden, so you understood this, Now I say that in below picture fig(A) is a child 

if that is a child what could figure(B) be? an adult.  If that is a child and that is an adult what could figure(C) be a family, of course. Now data is the same but information is different, and understanding is how you use your information to change your knowledge. That is easy for you but this problem is impossible for computers to solve right now and you see that how powerful you are to understand things on spot. We know from lab studies that children are able to understand the meaning of new staff- of toys, of words, of animals- at first sight. That is amazing, and you do this as well. How long did it take you to understand the word "Brexit"? Maybe you've seen it once or twice in the media, that was enough. Once you understood it, you can do stuff with it. When you know what a Brexit is, what could a Swexit be? Or Fraxit? Or Itaxit?. Never seen before, but you understand that at first sight, even more when you know what a Brexit is, what could a Bremain be or a Breturn? this might sound funny to you, and this time on reading this you might be laughing but that is how it is never seen before, but understand it on spot.

Remember that said face you were seeing on the blue screen before? Well these poor guys differ from each other by 50% in their data, but for us, it is 100% difference. You see how powerful our way of thinking is, but how do we make use of it to stay creative and innovative in the future? Well...First thing to realize, don't do it like computers. Many people think it is important nowadays to work harder, faster and more efficient to solve problems, but that is exactly what machines can do. Every efficient procedure will be replaced by algorithms eventually. What cannot be replaced is inefficient thinking integrating new ideas, giving rise to understanding of stuff. How do we do that? Well, first we take brakes, we sleep, we lose attention and focus and get distracted. This seems inefficient at first sight, but sometimes it is very effective. If you step back, and see the same things in a different context, because if you only dig into the data, just rely on data or information, and never step back to take time off to understand the whole picture of it, you'll never be able to make sense of it. As I mentioned in my last blog "creativity" that to generate a new idea you should go through theta, alpha and beta states only then you will be able to generate entirely new idea. Second, when you ask people “where do you get a good idea?” 70% answer, "Under the shower", followed by During sports, driving a car, vacuum cleaning the apartment, washing the dishes, see the pattern here? Whenever we do some automated routine of boring stuff, we seem to clear our mind and attract new ideas. In fact, this is a great technique many creative geniuses used. Dig into the problem, focus on the task, get involved and then step back. Do something unrelated. Not a new problem, but chillax. In Ancient Greece, this was Godified by saying, “To be kissed by a muse", but you have to create a kiss friendly atmosphere for such a muse. And this means that you step back, that you do something unrelated, and that some automated routine, sometimes boring staff because otherwise, it won't be possible to put the same things into a new context. Third, escape the echo chamber. Nowadays, it is so easy to be surrounded by convent but non-inspiring opinions. In fact, we don't like others opinions. Facebook algorithm filters all the online posts that are suitable to us. Most of our friends share similar points of views. We read newspapers that feature the opinions that we like. We use media online, tv, radio, to confirm our beliefs, but never to challenge them. But by doing so create echo chambers, filter bubbles around us. In order to spark new ideas, you should do the opposite. Try to provoke yourself from time to time. Read something you disagree with, have productive arguments with friends, and try to see things from the other side. Don't think like an algorithm. Now try to challenge your opinions and ideas instead of confirming them. Try to break the thinking rules instead of fallowing them. So what is the next great idea that is worth spreading? We don't know yet. But we can be pretty sure that it will be created by brains. Not because we are smarter, faster, or more intelligent than computers but the opposite. We're slower; we're irrational and imperfect. That is why we understand the world instead of analyzing it, and this is giving us the ultimate edge. We should appreciate, and be more proud of this because this is what makes us human.

©Malik Aaqib    ; (malikaaqib09.blogspot.com)