Monday, January 12, 2009

The problem with the brain

The throughput of a system cannot be more than the arrival rate. And people hate the idle state. We become interested in stuff... to keep us occupied. force the brain to do some work (the anti-bore state). over time, we realise our IQ, what we are good at and more importantly what we suck at. The problems that we can just solve, the problems that are close to the border line of our intelligence/capacity begin to interest us.

here comes the catch. the problems at this level need to exist. else we create them (for ex., some people get married :) ). over the last week, I suddenly realised I had nothing to think about, a neat solution that I was working on was patented by a jackass and I went blank. In my problem pursuit, i started looking at what other people do (in the process pissed off my roommates), came to this simple conclusion : A person's intelligence / capacity / capability can be directly measured by the problems they approach.

Now, the usual argument that intelligence is measured/seen by behavior might be... might be wrong, I believe intelligence is how well we can predict things. (obviously the bankers are stupid :) )

PS : the word problem has a very negative connotation. its otherwise here...

2 comments:

Suudhan said...

The throughput of a system cannot be more than the arrival rateThis is wrong when it comes to processing of the human brain.. This can be true only in the absence of intuition, and the subconscious mind

Our thru-put is much more than what arrives at any particular instant :)

And i agree with ur rest of the analysis..

raghuram said...

intuitions dont form by itself, they are just functions of saved past inputs.