this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 151 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (9 children)

If you ever study biochemistry, it leaves you absolutely in awe. The best engineering we can do is pretty amazing, we have computers and airplanes and all this magic stuff, but the stuff in you is a hundred, a thousand times better made. It's stunning. Comparatively speaking, it is perfect. And that's only the stuff we understand. The stuff in your brain, we do not.

[–] flippinfreebird@lemmy.today 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I remember a quote from Civ along the lines of "if the brain was simple enough for us to understand, our minds would be to simple to understand it."

[–] silasmariner@programming.dev 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

It's a pretty trivial informational paradox for a mind to comprehend itself -- comprehension of its comprehension of itself then needs further comprehension... So yeah. Only a much more complex mind can understand a given mind

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 hours ago

We don't need a single mind to understand the entirety of how the brain works. One of the powers of human knowledge is its distributed nature arising from our ability to write things down and create abstractions. What matters in the end is that we as a collective understand the brain.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 46 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Antivirus protection could be better, though. Oh, and the built in self destruct is kind of a bummer, too.

[–] dukatos@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 day ago

It is a planned obsolescence.

[–] makyo@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

If you ever need to claw your way out of a heap of rubble, you'll be thankful for them.

[–] Nangijala@feddit.dk 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The fact that we only recently mapped out the brain really tells you a lot about its complexity.

[–] socrates@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 day ago

And that was only a fruit fly brain! Human brain still hasn't been mapped.

[–] MHLoppy@fedia.io 59 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In the relatively short amount of time we've had with computers we've made pretty astounding progress though. If we had had a few million years to improve those silicon brains I think we'd give evolution a run for its money!

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 39 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yea, our engineered stuff might be simplistic compared to the brain and biology, but evolution is just a combination of luck, randomness and "unguided" trial and error. There's no "thought" to evolution and that's why we end up with all these....weird quirks and flaws LMAO

[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 days ago

those quirks are all features, i swear

[–] LostXOR@fedia.io 37 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Natural selection is essentially just a massively parallel Monte Carlo optimization algorithm that's been running for billions of years. It's so simple yet produces such amazing complexity.

[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

That was one of the better QoS settings on my router back in the day.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago

Give it a few more billion and we'll finally have an intelligence, that's not hell bent on destroying itself.

[–] 8baanknexer@lemmy.world 22 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think this might be a case of expecting a fish to climb a tree. Brains are terrible in fp32 performance, and computers are so far not great at reasoning. But that's mostly because they are made for different things. I'm not sure of this, but i would expect a single neuron firing costing a similar amount of energy as a single transistor firing. The difference is in part that they work differently, but I think the most important part is that they are put together differently. Computers were made for arithmetic while brains evolved for socialising and survival. For most other things you are 100% correct though, we could not recreate a bee or an ant even if we wanted to.

[–] Pulptastic@midwest.social 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I can create real time visual imagery with no apparent resolution limit or perceptible frame rate including audio and a soundtrack.

[–] EddoWagt@feddit.nl 5 points 1 day ago

Apparent and perceptible are the key words here. Your brain makes up pretty much everything and pretends it's the real deal. Detail and consistency really aren't all that great actually, much like ai video generation

[–] Goldmage263@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Oh, your brain is amazing, sure. Buuuut get Neuralink and let me plug my game in while you try to render the raytracing from foliage collision and I'm pretty sure you would crash like a Windows RT.

[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A lotta people have a resolution limit and use glasses to compensate

[–] Pulptastic@midwest.social 8 points 1 day ago

Not in their minds.

[–] DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Where’s the switcharoo? There’s supposed to be a Lemmy shattering switcharoo‽

[–] tfowinder@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 days ago

Watch this whenever you think humans have rivalled nature in building stuff that works.

Nature's crafts in unrivaled

[–] QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It makes me wish I believed in God.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 5 points 1 day ago

You're allowed to have a type of awe and reverence for the natural world, very much akin to religion, without needing to buy into any bullshit along with it.

It used to be pretty standard, and then the Christians (among others) fucked that up for everyone, and now you can't be anything other than an aggressive humanist atheist without people starting to make assumptions about you.

[–] mEEGal@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

careful what you wish for. year's not over...

[–] QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If Christ returned, I'd be an instant convert

[–] mEEGal@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Sounds like agnosticism to me 🤝🤝

But would you mind if it turned out to be a immensely powerful alien disguised as a guy from our own past ?

At least, that seems more likely to me...

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 17 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Most atheists fall under the agnostic atheist banner

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

I've met a few gnostic atheists. They can be weird. Their non-believing can look very much like theism.

I once met an actual gnostic atheist missionary. He was standing on a Tesco parking lot with a self-made mobile display handing out hand-drawn leaflets about atheism. He was literally preaching on the street corner. Looked like one of them jehovas whitnesses until you got up close.

[–] QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I really really do not want to be an atheist. But where is God?

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I really really do not want to be an atheist

Why?

But where is God?

what do you mean?

[–] QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)
  1. Because I don't wanna be a grumpy redditor with fingers covered in cheeto dust, jacking off to James Randi and Richard Dawkins arguing over who thinks the Bible is faker and gayer, with no magic to console me about the cruelty of the world, no afterlife to look forward to, stuck with the knowledge that this is all there is ever going to be.

  2. I mean, I don't want to disbelieve in miracles and mystery, but we live in a society laugh track where God cannot be found. Everyone with magic gets debunked, every study that confirms a supernatural power seems to get slapped with accusations of fraud and "The File Drawer Effect", and the evidence continues to pile up for a Materialistic view of the universe where nothing is immaterial and everything is ultimately matter or springs up from it...

I don't want to be an Atheist, but if God's here I can't find him.

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

if that’s your idea of an atheist then i don’t want to imagine what you think muslims are like 😂

tbh most people in australia are atheists but have nothing to do with reddit

god etc just doesn’t come up

stuck with the knowledge that this is all there is ever going to be.

This is all? We live in a wonderland compared to even 100 years ago

[–] QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 hours ago

Well it's what they tend to be here in Burgerland. The whole "rationalist" movement...

Seriously back on Facebook I couldn't even say I thought crystals looked pretty without fedoras telling me to "Go win the Randi prize!".. years after it stopped being offered..

As for Muslims.... since you asked...

I didn't really vibe with the Quran when I tried to read it but my experiences with those of the Islamic faith is that they're good people with good food, who'd like white people to stop blaming them for 9/11 (Which we all know Bush did anyway)

[–] QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 days ago

As long as he's capable of saving my soul.....

As long as I have a soul.....

After all, science distinguishable from magic is merely insufficiently advanced

If Batman appeared I would also immediately start believing in him.

That doesn't make me Batman-agnostic though.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'd personally want to kill them for creating such evil and suffering in the world.

[–] bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In the end, humans choose evil. Most people don't want to be a robot. So there is free will, free to choose. But when they could use free-will to do good they choose and do evil.

[–] Cronization@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Babies get cancer. That's not humans choosing evil. If there is a god that created a baby just to get cancer and die before age 3, that god is evil.

[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

That’s free will after Adam and Eve.

If you’re into that.

[–] bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There are hospitals trying their best to help with that, and you have people bombing hospitals for babies with cancer.

Animals eat animals. Isn't that evil? By that entire life is cruel, and I don't get why a god should have to take blame for it. It just seems to push away responsibility of doing good vs evil.

[–] Cronization@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Those people bombing hospitals are also evil. Stopping them from bombing hospitals wont stop babies from getting cancer. There can be (and are) multiple evil things and beings in life.

You seem to have forgotten the context of the comment chain. The grandparent comment of your comment that I replied to said that if Christ returned, the commenter would instantly convert. Christ returning would strongly imply that Christianity is correct. In Christianity, God is all knowing (omniscient) and all powerful (omnipotent). Being such a powerful god, if He doesn't stop babies from getting cancer in the first place, He is either evil or impotent.