Your mind like a graphics card and proccesor.

[mustbe18]

SO I've been having this idea lately. What is the brains total level of creation and processing power. Like what is the most graphically complicated thing the brain can simulate in a dream. Like pouring a glass of water and having it go exactly like it would in real life is incredibly hard for CGI in movies. another thing is having your brain create new scenery. When you awake you brain is turning actuall things into a mental simulation which you see and hear. but in the dream your brain has to create the scenery and laws. so what is the limit to the brains ability to create the scenario and sensory input. What is its relation to computer power. so my question is what is the most graphically complicated and processing powerful thing your brain has ever done and what is the limit? P.S. I haven't posted here in a while, It's good to be back .

[CourtingTheUnknown]

I'd go with close to infinite on that, because our memory is stored in layers and associations and the way we calculate and learn as we go is something that is hard to create for AI. Like you said, pouring water into a glass is hard for CGI. Imagine telling something like a robot with AI to pick up a specific rock out of a pile of differant rocks, and have the robot throw it over hand at a specific target. Take that one step further and have the target be another robot with AI that has to catch the rock thrown. The first robot would have to throw it in such a way that the other robot could catch it... etc.etc. For us the communication and act would be easy, but to create AI that has the capacity to do that, the storage space needed would mean that those robots would only have that function, because of the space needed for those calculations. Just tracking that sort of motion takes alot of computational power. It's just one example, and it's probably been done, but considering how easy it is for us to do that simple task, our storage capacity is enormous. Somewhere there is an actual calculation made that our brains store millions or billions of TERRAbites... Considering 1 gig in an IPOD shuffle is about the size of a binderclip, (and getting smaller by the year), our brains are insane machines of storage and retrieval. To answer your question, (I've posted this dream in other threads for examples), I've had sculptures created for me by objects in my dream that were alot like teseracts, or 4th dimensional objects. I don't have the words or ability to describe them properly, (waaay abstract), but think of those drawings M.C. Escher did of impossible architecture etc. The sculptures were alot like that. (If you don't know Escher check this link: Google Search for M.C. Escher stuff

[Robot_Butler]

I had an experience a while back that made me wonder the same thing: I had this lucid dream last night where I was hooked up to equipment that allowed me to create dreams in real time. Redundant, I know. The dream I was creating was about a spaceship flying into a field of millions and millions of missiles, trying to dodge through them. Each missile was a different color, to keep track of which bounty hunter shot the missile. Here's what amazes me. I could actually see each and every one of these missiles. They were all moving like a swarm of bees, and I could focus on thousands of them at a time. They were all different shapes, different sizes, and different colors. I remember thinking at the time, "How the hell am I even able to watch all these flying around at once, let alone be generating it all realtime and aware that I am doing it?" Sitting here now, I can barely even visualize five different shaped, different colored objects at one time. I can barely hold them in my minds eye while they are not moving. There is no way I could imagine millions of them all on different paths, all moving fast, all at once. Its not like this is something I see everyday, so I can just recall the memory somehow. I actually had to generate it with my conscious willpower in the dream. How brilliant are our god damn brains?

[yuriythebest]

in a WILD (the 'real 'only one I had) it made a mega detailed asteroid field- you could clearly see all the bumps in every asteroid.

[Dash]

Infinite. I had a dream last night that I was playing a video game, but it was real. Weird.

[LucidFreedoM]

Your brain is NOT creating these things from scratch...your brain is simply pulling information from your past experiences to create the dream scene before you..your brain isnt going through the entire dream and going "ok, that wall will be blue, that window will be broken, ok now lets make the sun, add some wind, ok now lets make the sky pale blue and then lets create a city, ok lets put some buildings here..." NO! Your brain is not creating ANYTHING..simply mimicking sensory input it remembers from waking life As for the glass of water, it would be waaay more difficult to try and make the water flow UP, because in normal, waking life, this is impossible, and you are so used to seeing gravity being applied constantly that its hard to deny one of the basic laws of our world The 'processing speed' of our brains is pretty much infinite..there is nothing you could possibly do in a dream that your brain couldnt handle

[Robot_Butler]

your brain isnt going through the entire dream and going "ok, that wall will be blue, that window will be broken, ok now lets make the sun, add some wind, ok now lets make the sky pale blue and then lets create a city, ok lets put some buildings here..." We do draw on experience, but we also have the ability to create through imagination. When you get a good sandbox lucid, you can get specific about what you want to see, and watch it materialize before you. That is human creativity. We can combine our experience based schemata into something new. We can invent. What amazes me, is the level of complexity you can create, even if it is only from memory and assumption. When lucid, it is easy to judge such things as they are happening and be amazed. What frustrates me is how I can create these scenes and witness them in absolute awe, but then have such a hard time remembering them in their full splendor. It seems like my memory is the bottleneck. (By the way, I like your avatar, LucidFreedoM. Luke Chueh is a great guy who deserves all the fame he has recently won. Everyone go buy some prints and t-shirts from him as chirstmas presents.)

[LucidFreedoM]

We do draw on experience, but we also have the ability to create through imagination. When you get a good sandbox lucid, you can get specific about what you want to see, and watch it materialize before you. That is human creativity. We can combine our experience based schemata into something new. We can invent. I disagree. I do not believe anything in a dream is 'new'. Anything we see in a dream, or anything we 'create' in a dream is simply a combination of past experiences, personal judgement and personal bias. The subconcious cannot be ignored, and to truly create something 'new', you would have to do just that. Everything is influenced by something. There is no way to create something 'new', simply because it is impossible to ignore yourself in a dream. The only substance in a dream is your mind..take that away and you are left with nothing, therefore making it impossible to ignore you subconsious, making it impossble to invent anything 'new'. Dreams are a passageway into your mind and past experiences will influence anything you 'create' in a dream, therefore making what you have 'created' simply a combination of your past experiences and your current opinions/judgements/biases...

[arby]

I remember reading that the processing speed of most areas of our brain that have to do with visuals is around 100hz. The reason it's so powerful, however is that there are billions of neurons firing each cycle making it like a billion core CPU that runs slowly. The computer anology breaks down very quickly under scrutiny, however. A fast mono-core system CANNOT represent a slow mega core system. They are vastly different.

[Sylph]

Your brain is NOT creating these things from scratch...your brain is simply pulling information from your past experiences to create the dream scene before you..your brain isnt going through the entire dream and going "ok, that wall will be blue, that window will be broken, ok now lets make the sun, add some wind, ok now lets make the sky pale blue and then lets create a city, ok lets put some buildings here..." NO! Your brain is not creating ANYTHING..simply mimicking sensory input it remembers from waking life. I disagree. Creating within a dream is about as viable as creating awake. You can argue nothing you create is ever truly "new" but dreaming has very little to do with it. You won't be creating anything "new" while awake, either. If anything, dreaming can often make the whole visualization process a lot easier. And, yes, you can stop in the middle of a dream to consider how something looks and how you could change it and you don't even have to be lucid to do it. As for the glass of water, it would be waaay more difficult to try and make the water flow UP, because in normal, waking life, this is impossible, and you are so used to seeing gravity being applied constantly that its hard to deny one of the basic laws of our world. Flying is easy. How used are we to seeing that. And anyway water flowing upwards is a really easy thing to imagine, you know. The 'processing speed' of our brains is pretty much infinite... That's where I think real world physics might have something to say. Our thinking runs on electricity after all. I generally suck at sciences but it seems to me that kind of thing matters.

[ThreeLetterSyndrom]

Somewhere there is an actual calculation made that our brains store millions or billions of TERRAbites... Yottabytes, actually. I think it's kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta, yotta. A yottabyte is 10 to the power of 24 bites. That's about the size of your regular harddisk*100 000 000 000 000 000 To compare, the total data on the internet barely gets to an exabyte. Your brain is so immensely powerful, in ways that you can't describe. You can't compare it with a pc. A pc is a glorified calculator, while the brain sucks at calculating. (sorry for the nerdiness in the biggest part of my post )

[Iamerik]

Yottabytes, actually. I think it's kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta, yotta. A yottabyte is 10 to the power of 24 bites. That's about the size of your regular harddisk*100 000 000 000 000 000 To compare, the total data on the internet barely gets to an exabyte. Your brain is so immensely powerful, in ways that you can't describe. You can't compare it with a pc. A pc is a glorified calculator, while the brain sucks at calculating. (sorry for the nerdiness in the biggest part of my post ) I wish I could hook my brain up to my PC, then I wouldn't have to worry about long loading times, bad performance in videogames, or upgrading my computer... And I could download everything I need to know for tests at school into my brain, along with a bunch of songs!

[arby]

Your brain is so immensely powerful, in ways that you can't describe. You can't compare it with a pc. A pc is a glorified calculator, while the brain sucks at calculating. Yeah, this is a side effect of the "multi-core" structure. It's terrible at iterative tasks in comparison but amazing at heuristic analysis. This is why computers simulate neural networks for heuristic analysis.

[ThreeLetterSyndrom]

Yeah, this is a side effect of the "multi-core" structure. It's terrible at iterative tasks in comparison but amazing at heuristic analysis. This is why computers simulate neural networks for heuristic analysis. I didn't have a clue what you were saying, until I looked up heuristic Well, that's certainly a true thing. I'd just like to mention that a computer never can get anywhere near to the brain in terms of memory, learning and connecting stuff. You see, everything needs to be pre-programmed, and its very very hard to create a computer that can 'learn'. Sure, you can make it automatically fit you needs, but that's the point where the cookie is eaten. Same thing goes for artificial intelligence. I don't really believe it's possible (maybe with a molecular computer) because all you can do is put algorithms in the computer, give it input, and it will just crunch the input through the algorithm and spit something out. The result never changes.