Neuralink Elon Musk. Part one: the Colossus of Human

Eccentric in the best sense of the word entrepreneur, playboy, philanthropist Elon Musk known around the world. He decided to bring humanity into space, to colonize Mars, to abandon a disposable rockets. He decided to make the world cleaner, transplanted us from cars with internal combustion engines to self-driving cars. While unfolding these businesses, he does not sit idly by. He conceived Neuralink that will help us become new people. Without borders and without weaknesses, as it should be in the new world (Elon musk).

To Document the crazy ideas Mask, as always, volunteered Tim urban from WaitButWhy (he wrote about ). We present one of the best works of modern popular science journalism. Further, in the first person.

Last month I had a telephone conversation.

Okay, maybe it was not so and the words weren't quite. But after I learned that a new company decided to create Elon Musk, I began to realize that they conceived you can call it that.

When I wrote about Tesla and SpaceX, I found out that to fully understand the activities of some companies can only close and far, inside and outside. Inside technical challenges faced by engineers, outside — existential problems facing our species. Inside — to see the world as it is now, outside to see a big story of how we got to this point and what may be the distant future.

The New company Ilona — Neuralink — not just the same six weeks after the first acquaintance with the company I am convinced that she somehow manages to upstage Tesla and SpaceX as the courage of the engineering undertakings, and the greatness of its mission. Two other companies are seeking to redefine what people should do in the future. Neuralink seeks to override the whom the tomorrow people.

Dizzying scope mission Neuralink in combination with a labyrinth of incredible complexity of the human brain is very difficult to comprehend. But when I understood it when I spent enough time, approaching and distancing the picture, I realized that it was the coolest thing I saw. I think I took a time machine went into the future and came back to tell you guys, this is even weirder than we thought.

But before I take you in my time machine to show what I found, we need to get a magnifying machine. Because, as I understand it, the plan for the "tin foil hat" or a wizard's hat, Elon musk is difficult to understand immediately.

So get ready to forget everything your brain knows about himself and his future, fall on the couch, and drove into a wormhole.

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Part 1. The Human colossus

600 million years ago no one was doing anything at all.

The Problem is that no one had any nerves. Without nerves, you cannot move or think, to process all sorts of information. Just a little remains to exist and to wait until the day I die.

But then came the jellyfish.

These jellyfish were the first animals that understood that nerves were needed to understand what they are, and got his first nervous system — network of nerves.

A Neural network of a jellyfish has allowed them to gather important information about the world — for example, where the objects are, where predators are, where the food — and to convey this information, as through a large social network in all parts of the body. The ability to obtain and process information meant that the jellyfish is actually able to respond to changes in their environment to increase the chances of a quality life, not flounder aimlessly and hope for the best.

A Little later there was a new animal that had even more cool idea.

A flatworm found that it would be possible to do much more if someone in the nervous system was responsible for everything — like a boss nervous system. This boss lived in the flat head of the worm and ran the entire nervous system of the body that conveys all new information directly to him. So instead to organize themselves in the form of a network, the nervous system flat worm huddled in the form of the Central channel of the nerves that were sending information back and forth between the boss and everyone else.

The System is the boss of the channel in the flat worm was the first in the world to the Central nervous system, and the boss in the head flat worm was the world's first brain.

The Idea of the boss in the nervous system quickly picked up all the others, and soon appeared on Earth thousands of species with brains.

Time Passed, and the animals of the Earth began to invent new and complex system of the body, so the bosses becoming more and more busy.

A Little later arrived the mammals. For these Millennials of the animal Kingdom life was already complicated. Yes, their hearts had to beat, my lungs breathe, but mammals wanted more than just survive — they've got difficult feelings such as love, anger and fear.

For the brain of reptiles, which so far had to deal only with reptiles and other creatures easier, mammals were just... something more. Therefore, in mammals, a second boss, which began to work in tandem with the brain of reptiles and took care of all these new needs. So there is the limbic system.

Over the next 100 million years, mammalian life has become more complicated and rich, and one day two boss discovered a new resident in his office.

What at first seemed a random baby, was actually an early version of the neocortex, and although at first he spoke very little, together with the appearance of primates, then apes and the first hominids, the new boss has grown from a baby into a boy and then a teenager with his view of how everything should work.

The idea of a new boss has been very useful, and under his leadership, the hominids learned to make tools, hunting strategy and cooperation with other hominids.

Over the next few million years, the new boss became older and wiser, and his ideas have been continuously improved. He figured out how to get rid of the nudity. He knew how to control fire. He learned to make spears.

But the coolest trick it was thinking. He turned the head of every man in the little world-in-itself, making humans the first animals that can comprehend complex ideas, argue and come to a resolution, long-term plans.

And then, what, 100 000 years ago, there was a breakthrough.

The Human brain has evolved to the point where I start to understand that the sound "rock" was a rock itself, and it can be used as symbol rock — this sound is implied the stone. First man invented language.

Very soon there were the words for all sorts of things, and to 50 000 BC, the people already spoke in complete, complex language with each other.

The Neocortex has made people into mages. Not only that, he has made the human mind a wonderful inner ocean complex thoughts, his recent breakthrough has found a way to embody these ideas in symbolic set of sounds and to send them to vibrate through the air in the heads of other people that could decipher the sounds, and soak up clothed in their ideas in their own ocean of thoughts. The neocortex of human thought about things for a long time and now finally he had someone to discuss them.

Gathered party neocortexes. Neocortex — well, yet neokoroi — shared with each other everything is possible: stories from the past, funny jokes, formed opinions, and future plans.

But the most useful was to share everything they learned. If one person learned by trial and error, which berries of a certain kind make the life of 48 hours, continuous diarrhea, he could be using language to tell about his difficult life lesson for the rest of his tribe. Tribe members can use the language to convey this lesson to their children, and their children — their children. Instead of different people repeating the same mistake from time to time, one of them might say "don't eat these berries," and his wisdom will pierce the space and time to protect everybody from bad feelings.

The same thing happens when one person will come up with some new clever trick. One extremely clever hunter, Amateur watch the constellations of stars and the annual migration patterns of herds of wild animals, could share developed a system that uses the night sky to determine exactly how many days are left until the return of the herd. Although some hunters could come to create such a system yourself, if you pass it from mouth to mouth, all future hunters in the tribe will be able to take advantage of the brilliant discovery of his ancestor. In the future this discovery will be the first starting point in the body of knowledge of the hunter.

For example, this spread of knowledge will make the hunting season more efficient and give members of the tribe more time to work on their weapons that will allow one brilliant hunter a few generations to find a way to create more light and durable copies which can be thrown more accurately. And just as now every hunter in the future and the present of the tribe would hunt with a spear is more effective.

The Language allows the best insights of the most intelligent people be passed down through generations accumulate in a small tower collective knowledge of the tribe — "greatest hits" among the best moments of their ancestors. Each new generation will get the turret lined up in their heads as the starting point for life, and she will lead them to even more cool discoveries based on the knowledge of our ancestors. The wisdom of the tribe would grow and spread. Language is the difference between this:

And this:

The Main improvement of the trajectory occurs for two reasons. Each generation can learn much more when everyone is talking to each other, compare notes and combine their individual knowledge (which is why on the second chart the blue stolbe...