Tatiana Chernigovskaya: Humanity Pays A Huge Price For The Existence Of Geniuses

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Video: Tatiana Chernigovskaya: Humanity Pays A Huge Price For The Existence Of Geniuses

Video: Tatiana Chernigovskaya: Humanity Pays A Huge Price For The Existence Of Geniuses
Video: ПРОФЕССОР ТАТЬЯНА ЧЕРНИГОВСКАЯ - ЖЁСТКО ПРО ЦИФРОВУЮ ЭПОХУ: МИР СЛЕТЕЛ С КАТУШЕК! 2024, March
Tatiana Chernigovskaya: Humanity Pays A Huge Price For The Existence Of Geniuses
Tatiana Chernigovskaya: Humanity Pays A Huge Price For The Existence Of Geniuses
Anonim

Neurolinguist and experimental psychologist, Doctor of Philology and Biology, Corresponding Member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences Tatyana Chernigovskaya read for the project “Snob. Dialogues”lecture“How the Internet has changed our brain”, in which she dispelled popular stereotypes about the work of the brain and explained why Google and online education are not as useful as they seem.

The brain recipe looks like this: 78% water, 15% fat, and the rest is protein, potassium hydrate and salt. There is nothing more complex in the Universe from what we know and what is comparable to the brain in general. Before going directly to the topic of how the Internet has changed our brain, I will tell, based on modern data, about how the brain learns and how it changes.

We can say that the fashion for the study of the brain and consciousness has now begun. Especially consciousness, although this is a dangerous territory, because no one knows what it is. The worst, and also the best, that can be said about this is that I know that I am. This in English is called first person experience, that is, first-person experience. This is something, we hope, that almost no animals have and so far artificial intelligence does not. However, I always frighten everyone by the fact that the time is not far away when artificial intelligence realizes itself as a kind of individuality. At this moment, he will have his own plans, his motives, his goals, and, I assure you, we will not enter into this sense. This, of course, is understandable, films are being made, etc. Do you remember "Supremacy" with Johnny Depp, about how a person, dying, connected himself to the network? At the premiere of this film in St. Petersburg, during the screening, I heard behind my back how one person says to another: "The script was written by Chernigovskaya."

The topic of the brain became popular, people began to understand that the brain is a mysterious powerful thing, which for some reason we misunderstand as “my brain”. We have absolutely no reason for this: who is whose is a separate question.

That is, he ended up in our cranium, in this sense we can call him “mine”. But he is incomparably more powerful than you. "Are you saying that the brain and me are different?" - you ask. The answer is yes. We have no power over the brain, it makes the decision itself. And that puts us in a very awkward position. But the mind has one trick: the brain itself makes all decisions, in general it does everything itself, but it sends a signal to the person - you, they say, do not worry, you did it all, it was your decision.

How much energy do you think the brain consumes? 10 watts. I don't even know if there are such bulbs. Probably in the refrigerator. The best brains consume, say, 30 watts in their best creative moments. A supercomputer needs megawatts, real powerful supercomputers consume the energy needed to electrify a small city. It follows that the brain works in a completely different way than the computer. This makes us think that if we knew how it works, it would affect all areas of our life, including even the energy one - it would be possible to use less energy.

Last year, all computers in the world were equal in performance to one human brain. Do you understand how long the evolution of the brain has traveled? Over time, Neanderthals turned into Kant, Einstein, Goethe and further down the list. We pay a huge price for the existence of geniuses. Nervous and mental disorders come out on top in the world among diseases, they are beginning to outstrip cancer and cardiovascular diseases in terms of quantity, which is not only a horror and nightmare in general, but, among other things, a very large dynamic burden for all developed countries.

We want everyone to be normal. But the norm is not only that which rests against pathology, but also that which rests against another pathology from the opposite side - genius. Because genius is not the norm. And, as a rule, these people pay a high price for their genius. Of these, a huge percentage of people who either get drunk or commit suicide, or schizophrenia, or they certainly have something. And this is a huge statistic. This is not grandmother's talk, in fact it is.

What is the Difference Between Brain and Computer

We are born with the most powerful computer in our heads. But you need to install programs in it. Some programs are already in it, and some need to be uploaded there, and you download all your life until you die. He rocks it all the time, you change all the time, you rebuild. During the minutes that we just spoke, the brain of all of us, mine, of course, too, has already been rebuilt. The main job of the brain is to learn. Not in a narrow, banal sense - like knowing who Dreiser or Vivaldi is, but in the broadest one: he absorbs information all the time.

We have over a hundred billion neurons. In different books, different numbers are given, and how you can count them seriously. Each of the neurons, depending on the type, can have up to 50 thousand connections with other parts of the brain. If anyone can count and count, he will receive a quadrillion. The brain is not just a neural network, it is a network of networks, a network of networks of networks. In the brain, 5, 5 petabytes of information is three million hours of video viewing. Three hundred years of continuous viewing! This is the answer to the question whether we will overload the brain if we consume "extra" information. We can overload it, but not with "unnecessary" information. To begin with, what is information for the brain itself? It's not just knowledge. He is busy with movements, busy with the movement of potassium and calcium through the cell membrane, how the kidneys work, what makes the larynx, how the composition of the blood changes.

We know, of course, that there are functional blocks in the brain, that there is some kind of localization of functions. And we think, like fools, that if we do language work, then the zones in the brain will be activated that are occupied with speech. Well, no, they won't. That is, they will be involved, but the rest of the brain will also take part in this. Attention and memory will work at this moment. If the task is visual, then the visual cortex will also work, if the auditory, then the auditory. Associative processes will always work, too. In short, during the execution of a task in the brain, no separate area is activated - the whole brain is always working. That is, the areas that are responsible for something seem to exist, and at the same time, they seem to be absent.

Our brain has a different organization of memory than a computer - it is organized semantically. That is, say, information about a dog does not at all lie in the place where our memory of animals is collected. For example, yesterday a dog knocked over a cup of coffee on my yellow skirt - and forever my dog of this breed will be associated with a yellow skirt. If I write in some simple text that I associate such a dog with a yellow skirt, I will be diagnosed with dementia. Because according to earthly rules, the dog should be among other dogs, and the skirt should be next to the blouse. And according to the divine rules, that is, cerebral, the memories in the brain lie where they want. In order for you to find something on your computer, you must specify the address: folder such and such, file such and such, and type keywords in the file. The brain also needs an address, but it is specified in a completely different way.

In our brain, most of the processes run in parallel, while computers have modules and work in series. It only seems to us that the computer is doing a lot of work at the same time. In fact, it just jumps from task to task very quickly.

Our short-term memory is not organized in the same way as in a computer. In the computer there is "hardware" and "software", but in the brain hardware and software are inseparable, it is some kind of mixture. You can, of course, decide that the hardware of the brain is genetics. But those programs that our brain pumps and installs in itself all our life, after a while become iron. What you have learned begins to influence genes.

The brain does not live, like Professor Dowell's head, on a plate. He has a body - ears, arms, legs, skin, so he remembers the taste of lipstick, he remembers what it means "heel itches." The body is an immediate part of it. The computer does not have this body.

How virtual reality is changing the brain

If we sit all the time on the Internet, then something appears that is recognized as a disease in the world, namely, computer addiction. It is treated by the same specialists who treat drug addiction and alcoholism, and in general various manias. And this is really a real addiction, not just a scarecrow. One of the troubles that arises with computer addiction is the deprivation of social interaction. Such people do not develop what is now considered one of the last (and then elusive) privileges of a person in comparison with all other neighbors on the planet, namely the ability to build a model of the psyche of another person. In Russian there is no good term for this action, in English it is called the theory of mind, which is often idiotically translated as “theory of mind” and has nothing to do with it. But in fact, this means the ability to look at the situation not with your own eyes (brain), but through the eyes of another person. This is the basis of communication, the basis of learning, the basis of empathy, empathy, etc. And this is the setting that appears when a person is taught this. This is an extremely important thing. Those people who are completely absent from this setting are autistic patients and patients with schizophrenia.

Sergey Nikolaevich Enikolopov, a great expert on aggression, says: nothing can replace a friendly slap on the head. He is deeply right. The computer is submissive, you can turn it off. When a person had already “killed” everyone on the Internet, he thought that he should go eat a cutlet, turned off the computer. Turned on - and they again run around alive. Such people are deprived of the skill of social communication, they do not fall in love, they do not know how to do it. And in general, trouble happens to them.

A computer is a repository of external information. And when external carriers of information appeared, human culture began. There are still disputes whether the biological evolution of man is over or not. And, by the way, this is a serious question. Geneticists say it's over, because everything else that develops in us is already culture. My objection to geneticists is: "How do you know, if it's not a secret?" How long have we lived on the planet? This means that even if we forget about culture in general, then people of the modern type live 200 thousand years. Ants, for example, live 200 million years, compared with our 200 thousand years is a millisecond. When did our culture begin? Well, 30 thousand years ago, I agree even for 50, for 150 thousand, although this was not the case. This is generally an instant. Let's live at least another million years, then we'll see.

The information warehouse is becoming more and more complex: all these clouds in which our data hang, video libraries, movie libraries, libraries, museums grow every second. Nobody knows what to do about it, because this information cannot be processed. The number of articles related to the brain exceeds 10 million - they simply cannot be read. Every day about ten comes out. Well, what should I do with this now? Accessing these repositories is becoming more difficult and expensive. Access is not a library card, but the education that a person is given, and an idea of how to get this information and what to do with it. And education is getting longer and more expensive. It doesn't matter who pays: the student himself or the state, or the sponsor - that's not the point. It is objectively very expensive. Therefore, we can no longer avoid contact with the virtual environment. We found ourselves in a world that does not just consist entirely of information - it is a liquid world. This is not just a metaphor, the term fluid world is used. Liquid because one person can be represented in ten persons, ten nicknames, while we do not know where he is. Moreover, we do not want to know. What difference does it make if he is sitting in the Himalayas at the moment, in Peru or in the next room, or is he not sitting anywhere at all and is this a simulation?

We found ourselves in a world that has become an incomprehensible object: it is not known by whom it is inhabited, whether there are all living people in it or not.

We believe: how good it is that we have the possibility of distance learning - this is access to everything in the world! But such training requires a very careful selection of what to take and what not to take. Here's a story: I recently bought an avocado about to make guacamole sauce and forgot how to make it. What should I put there? Can I mash it with a fork, for example, or be sure to use a blender? Naturally, I go to Google, half a second - I get an answer. It is clear that this is not important information. If I'm interested in knowing what grammar the Sumerians had, the last place I go would be Wikipedia. So I have to know where to look. This is where we are faced with an unpleasant but important question: how much are digital technologies changing ourselves?

What's the problem with googling and online education?

Any training stimulates our brain. Even idiotic. By learning, I do not mean sitting in class and reading textbooks, I mean any work that is done by the brain and which is difficult for it given to the brain. Art is passed from master to student, from person to person. You can't learn cooking from a book - nothing will come of it. To do this, you need to stand and watch what the other is doing and how. I have a wonderful experience. I was visiting a friend and his mother made pies that are only eaten in heaven. I don't understand how this could have been baked. I tell her: "Please dictate the recipe to me," which does not speak of my mind. She dictated to me, I wrote it all down, performed it exactly … and threw it all in the trash! It was impossible to eat. A taste for reading complex, interesting literature cannot be instilled remotely. A person goes to study art to a specific master in order to get on an intellectual needle and drive to receive. There are many factors that electrons do not transmit. Even if these electrons are transmitted in video lecture format, it is still not the same. Please let 500 billion people receive this distance learning. But I want a hundred of them to receive an ordinary education, a traditional one. I was told the other day: it was decided that the children will soon not write by hand at all, but will only type on the computer. Writing - fine motor skills are not just for the hands, it is the motor skills of the right place, which, in particular, is associated with speech and self-organization.

There are some rules that apply to cognitive and creative thinking. One of them is to remove cognitive control: stop looking around and be afraid of mistakes, stop looking at what the neighbors are doing, stop reproaching yourself: “Probably, I cannot do this, in principle I cannot do this, it is not worth starting, I am not prepared enough ". Let thoughts flow as they flow. They themselves will flow to the right place. The brain should not be busy with computational work, like a calculator. Some firms that can afford it (I know there are some in Japan) hire a freaky person, an absolute hippie in behavior. He interferes with everyone, hates everyone, gets paid for nothing, does not come in a suit, as expected, but in some kind of tattered jeans. He sits where it is not necessary, overturns everything, he smokes where no one is allowed, but he is allowed, causes a powerful negative reaction. And then suddenly he says: "You know, this must be here, and this is here, and this is here." The result is a profit of 5 billion.

The average number of searches on Google in 1998 was 9.8 thousand, now there are 4.7 trillion. That is, in general, a wild amount. And we are witnessing what is now called the Google effect: we are addicted to the pleasure of getting information very quickly at any time. This leads to the fact that we have different types of memory deteriorate. Working memory is getting pretty good, but very short. The Google effect is what we get when we search for at our fingertips, that is, as if poking a finger, here it is - climbed. In 2011, an experiment was carried out, published in the journal Science: it was proved that students who have constant and fast access to a computer (and now this is all, because everyone has tablets), can memorize much less information than those who was a student before this era. This means that the brain has changed since then. We store in long-term computer memory what we ought to store in our brains. This means that our brain is different. Now everything goes to the fact that he is becoming an appendage to the computer.

We are dependent on some kind of toggle switch, which we will be completely unprepared to turn off. Can you imagine how high our degree of dependence on him is? The more “Google”, the less we see “Google” in it - we trust it completely. And where did you get the idea that he is not lying to you? You, of course, can object to this: why did I get the idea that my brain is not lying to me. And then I shut up, because I didn't take it from anything, the brain is lying.

Relying on Internet technologies, on virtual worlds, we begin to lose ourselves as individuals. We no longer know who we are, because because of the nicknames we do not understand with whom we are communicating. Maybe you think that you communicate with different people, but in reality there is one person instead of eight names, or even instead of thirty. I do not want to be perceived as a retrograde - I myself spend a wild amount of time in the computer. Recently I bought myself a tablet, and I ask myself: what the hell, why am I always on their needle, why do they slip me this Windows version or another? Why should I spend my precious cells - gray, white, of all colors - on satisfying the ambitions of some intellectual monsters who are technically well prepared? There are no other options, however. Perhaps, on this note I will finish.

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