Intelligence Limits Essay

548 Words3 Pages
“The Limits of Intelligence” by Douglas Fox, published by The Scientific American, explores the possibilities along with the limitations, of any evolutionary intelligence or brain growth. Fox argues that although there are multiple routes to increasing neuronal capacity, each possibility also comes with their own hurdles, many boiling down to the laws of thermodynamics and physics. Fox argues that even though we have the ability to increase neuronal capacity, it would most likely lead to diminishing results such of energy consumption, slow processing, and neurons firing randomly or “too much noise”. Fox concludes that human brain is working pretty close to the physical limit, and it is unlikely that our brains will be able to store much more knowledge in the future. However, Fox suggests that although we may have reached our intrinsic threshold for knowledge, there are a few extrinsic outlets for knowledge growth. Fox introduces four key evolutionary “tweaks” that would promote neuronal activity and brain capacity, but would ultimately lead to disadvantages. First, Fox argues that by increasing brain size by adding more neurons would increase processing capacity. However, with a bigger brain, more energy is needed. Axons connecting neurons would become longer and would make them fundamentally slower and would cost too much energy. Another “tweak” would be to increase interconnectedness by establishing more synapses between neurons, and enabling communication to become faster. Nevertheless, this would also consume too much energy. Third, Fox argues that by shrinking neurons and axons in the brain, communication speed would not be compromised and there would be more room for neuronal development. However, nature seems to have already made our axons as thin as they can functionally be. Based on research performed by Simon Laughlin, a theoretical neuroscientist at the
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