Is the human brain really the most complex object in the universe?

BACK in 2012, neuroscientist Christof Koch wrote in his e book Consciousness: Confessions of a romantic reductionist that the human mind is “probably the most advanced object within the identified universe”. On condition that there are about 86 billion neurons in a mind, linked up in ways in which we’re solely starting to unravel, this appears intuitive. However once I put it to David Wolpert on the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico – created within the Eighties as a hub for the budding discipline of complexity science – he doesn’t see it that method. “It’s nearly farcical to entertain that we’re probably the most advanced system within the universe,” he says. “The query is definitely wrongheaded.”

Regardless of this, I persevere. Absolutely, there’s some frequent measure of complexity that may be utilized to all types of intricate programs? In any case, for those who squint, clusters of galaxies and the filaments that join them seem like tangled circuits of neurons. There are even roughly the identical variety of neurons within the human mind as there are galaxies within the observable universe. This similarity in kind could have one thing to do with normal legal guidelines via which complexity emerges, says Ricard Solé at Pompeu Fabra College in Barcelona, Spain. Or it could not. “Coincidentally, which may seem in each programs, however that doesn’t imply something,” he says.

Apart from, complexity isn’t outlined by parts and their interconnections. It’s the concept the entire is greater than the…