The human brain is probably the most amazing thing I have ever come across. Just the other day I went for a long drive with my parents in the car. I'd hardly slept the previous night cause I went to bed at my usual bed time of 2 am and was woken up early in the morning at 530. I was half asleep, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't drive now should it. So I was driving along at a surprisingly brisk speed, and since my mind tends to wander a lot more when I'm half asleep, I found myself analyzing all the things my brain was doing.
Firstly all my "major" functions like respiration, heart beat, digestion etc etc.
Next, my limbs were performing a range of activities. My hands were usually at 10 and 3(yes I know its 10 and 2 but this is my SHTYLE ;) ) on the steering wheel. They were applying just enough pressure to keep it going straight if I wanted to go straight. When there were turns, my brain was able to calculate exactly how much force to apply so as to do the initial turn and also when exactly to straighten and so on. My brain was also compensating for the fact that I was driving a power assisted steering rather than the manual steering I usually do. Thats all my right hand had to do, but my left hand had to change the gears whenever my brain realised I was over-revving the engine or under-revving it. It also had to coordinate with my left leg which was working the clutch. And speaking of legs, my brain had to know exactly when to push and how much to push and how fast to release the clutch so as to not stall the engine and yet keep going at the pace I was. Then my right leg. It had to accelerate at the right amount and also break at the right places. It also had to coordinate with all the other limbs to ensure smooth drive and also me getting shouted at by my parents ;) .
My brain was also constantly getting information from my eyes and ears (sometimes my nose also ;) ) so as to work the other limbs properly. It was also making my neck and eyes move so as to get the best possible information from the three mirrors and also from the windows and the windscreen. It had to decide when to start when to stop when to go faster when to go slower when to overtake from this information available and from its calculations.
How does it calculate so fast? I doubt that the human brain actually measures that the car in front is 1.23213123123123123(+-)10^(-17) m in front like a computer would. It approximates that if I were to slightly go faster I might not hit the car in front. And if I got too close (ie when it estimates I probably would hit the car) it has to slow down. The so called negative feedback. But in negative feedback you'd probably measure the distance each time and reduce it to zero. But thats not the case here. Its simple approximation.
For all the computational capacity of a super computer, could it ever determine whether it would hit the car in front if it increased the speed slightly? Yet my brain did it ! So if my brain was so much better than a super computer, imagine how much better say Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman's brains would be ! Maybe thats the answer to better computation. Stop measuring things. Look at the human brain. Learn to approximate :) . Or at least thats the conclusion I derived in my "sleep-drunk" state.
Woah! I was really impressed with myself now. I continued to observe all the other "great" feats I accomplished like overtaking performing a U turn, reversing etc etc and got home feeling awesome.
And then it hit me. Every one of the thousands of people I'd seen on the road were doing the same thing :( . I realized I'm not that amazing after all :'(
