Intrinsic Limitations of the Human Mind

Abstract

“Can machines think?” this was a question proposed by Alan Turing about half a century ago. The significance of that single question gave birth to the extremely interesting field of Artificial Intelligence. The computational resources have since grown and I believe are growing exponentially. Our understanding of the nature and its mechanisms has increased vastly. All branches of science that were earlier thought to be separate entities and self – contained in their own domains are merging incessantly. However, everything that exists in this universe is constrained to certain inherent limitations. These limitations are based on the fundamental constants which are governing the cosmos. Based on these limitations, Seth Lloyd attempted to formulate the finite limitation of computational processes. The human brain is a complex, adaptive and a self-organizing system. Intelligence is an emergent property of this complex networked structure but, this intelligence comes at cost of gradual dissipation of information (entropy generation). Thus, the human brain is a dissipative system, an entropy producing machine like, a computer that constantly generates entropy through the cognitive processes occurring within its intricately fractalized networked structure. The intrinsic limitation to our thought processes, the computing power of our mind is thus investigated in this paper.