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A few quotes on thinking from Tim Urban, blogger at Wait But Why

Computers have been a game-changer, allowing humanity to outsource many of its brain-related tasks and better function as a single organism. But there’s one kind of brain labor computers still can’t quite do. Thinking.

Computers can compute and organize and run complex software—software that can even learn on its own. But they can’t think in the way humans can. The Human Colossus knows that everything it’s built has originated with its ability to reason creatively and independently—and it knows that the ultimate brain extension tool would be one that can really, actually, legitimately think. It has no idea what it will be like when the Computer Colossus can think for itself—when it one day opens its eyes and becomes a real colossus—but with its core goal to create value and push technology to its limits, the Human Colossus is determined to find out.

Knowledge works like a tree. If you try to learn a branch or a leaf of a topic before you have a solid tree trunk foundation of understanding in your head, it won’t work. The branches and leaves will have nothing to stick to, so they’ll fall right out of your head.

<aside> 💡 This piece is a synthesis of Tim Urban’s Neuralink blog post where I try to understand the underlying structure of the brain.

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The Brain/Bộ não

Outer layers

• dura matter/màng cứng ("hard mother"): firm, rugged, waterproof layer, as sensitive as your face skin, why we have bad headaches? → prob pressure on or confusions in the dura
• arachnoid matter/màng nhện ("spider mother"): a layer of skin and then an open space with these stretchy-looking fibers → Those fibers stabilize the brain in position so it can’t move too much, and they act as a shock absorber when your head bumps into something.
• pia matter/màng mềm ("soft mother): a fine, delicate layer of skin that’s fused with the outside of the brain. You know how when you see a brain, it’s always covered with icky blood vessels? Those aren’t actually on the brain’s surface, they’re embedded in the pia.

• the most complex known object in the universe

<aside> 🎓 The brain: one of the most information-dense, structured, and self-structuring matter known

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• operates on 20 watts of power
• what the brain looks like in our head

• the 3rd pic depicts how human brain is more developed than animals' due to the CORTEX (see below at the cortex section)

Brain stem (thân não) and cerebellum (tiểu não)

• medula oblongata/hành não - really just wants you to not die. It does the thankless tasks of controlling involuntary things like your heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure, along with making you vomit when it thinks you’ve been poisoned.

• pons/cầu não - deals with swallowing, bladder controlling, facial expressions, chewing, saliva, posture, tears

• mid brain/não giữa or trung não - deals with vision, hearing, motor control, alertness, temperature control, and a bunch of other things that other people in the brain already do

<aside> 🎓 the midbrain and the pons control your voluntary eye movement

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• cerebellum/tiểu não - helps humans stay balanced, coordinated, moving normally

Limbic system: survival system (lies above the brain stem)/thuỳ viền

• drives the primitive survival mode
• also where your emotions live, and in the end, emotions are also all about survival—they’re the more advanced mechanisms of survival, necessary for animals living in a complex social structure.
• gaining control over your limbic system is both the definition of maturity and the core human struggle
• half of what makes us human and relates to most of the fun we have in life i.e. fulfilling our animal needs
  • the con: limbic system doesnt get that we live in a civilization → if let it run your life too much, it will control your life and ruin it 🤯
• parts
  • amygdala
  • hippocampus
  • thalamus/đồi thị
  • hypothalamus

Cortex (vỏ não) - the part that makes us distinctly human :|

• brain has 100B neurons, 15-20B of these are in the cortex, rest are in the animal parts of brain

• Frontal/thuỳ trán: handles personality, what we think of as "thinking" - reasoning, planning, executive function
• Parietal/thuỳ đỉnh: controls your sense of touch

⇒ these 2 cortices contain:

• primary motor cortex vs. primary somatosensory cortex
• Temporal/thuỳ thái dương
• Occipital/thuỳ chẩm
• cortex is just outer 2 millimeters of the brain - thickness of a nickel
  • if u take the cortex off the brain and spread it out, it's equal to a dinner napkin
  • the rest is just wiring
• where most of action of brain happens - think, move, feel, see, hear, remember, speak, understand language

Neurons

• neuron: core unit in comm network that makes up the brains and nervous systems
• how neurons communicate with each other?

Neural Networks/Neural Pathways

Neurons are similar to computer transistors in one way—they also transmit information in the binary language of 1’s (action potential firing) and 0’s (no action potential firing). But unlike computer transistors, the brain’s neurons are constantly changing.

• when u learn a new skill, u get pretty good at it and the next day u try and u suck, what is happening?
• when u get pretty good at something, there are changes to the amount of chemicals in the signaling between neurons
• repetition causes chemicals to adjust → u improve → next day, chemicals function normal → improvement: knock out