The Science Behind the Secret-Decodiong the Law of Attraction by Travis S. Taylor

Author:Travis S. Taylor [Taylor, Travis S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 1-4391-3339-5
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

"Brain and brain! What is brain?!" That is one of the funniest lines from the original Star Trek series. In fact, it is probably my favorite line from the whole series.

It's from the episode where this woman appeared on the bridge of the Enterprise and then disappeared, and when Kirk had a scan of the ship run they found Spock's body but his brain was gone!

When Captain Kirk has a chance to question the woman, in his best interrogator fashion, he asks again and again, "Where is Spock's brain?" She finally replies in a temper tizzy, "Brain and brain! What is brain?"

The funniest part to me has always been the way she said it. All through graduate school—heck, even undergraduate school—I recall many times after endless study sessions and homework sessions somebody in the group looking up and saying that we needed to use our brains to solve the problem, and somebody else responding with that crazy quote from Star Trek.

But in terms of our discussion of The Secret and quantum mechanics, that is a very valid question for anyone to ask.

"What is brain?"

About fifteen years ago, I was working on a project for the army to create computers that could differentiate vehicles via visual input (i.e., through images from cameras and videos). We attempted to do this using a thing called an artificial neural network. An artificial neural network, or ANN for short, mimics certain processes of how we believed the brain worked.

It was an artificial neural network because we took some studies of real neural networks within the brain and tried to rebuild those using solid-state electronic circuits.

One of the older professors was convinced he could re-create the brain, going down a never-ending path of trying to show that if you add this widget here, and that widget there, and do some more math here, sooner or later he would get to an artificial brain. He was always just one more connection or widget away from success.

Like I said, it was a never-ending path. And he was very unsuccessful as he traveled down that path. We did create some truncated versions of real brainlike neural networks that did decent jobs at identifying, say, a Mustang from a Camaro or an American tank from a Russian tank, which was along the lines of what the army wanted from us. But they were not very efficient at doing so, not truly accurate, and clearly could not perform the function as well as a human brain. If I showed you a Russian tank and an American tank, you might not know which is which, but you would most certainly know that they were different and could see the clear differences. With a minimal amount of training you could easily identify which one was the American tank and which one was the Russian tank. Even a child looking at a Mustang and a Camaro can quickly tell the difference.

Why is it then that our brains work so much better than the artificial

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