I just want to record down some of realizations I make while studying...
From wikipedia: "The human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the 1011 (one hundred billion) neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 1015 synapses (1 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates vary for an adult, ranging from 1014 to 5 x 1014 synapses (100 to 500 trillion)."
That's a lot of connections. When the human brain develops, every axon has to know exactly where to go for us to function properly, all encoded in our DNA. How many random point mutations it would take at the same time for us to learn how to interact with our environment? (Because one beneficial mutation, which is already rare, without a few thousand that go with it has no chance of being preserved in the genetic pool.) It doesn't seem like a billion years of evolution would do it...
Too bad I didn't pay enough attention in my stats class to actually calculate this.
From wikipedia: "The human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the 1011 (one hundred billion) neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 1015 synapses (1 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates vary for an adult, ranging from 1014 to 5 x 1014 synapses (100 to 500 trillion)."
That's a lot of connections. When the human brain develops, every axon has to know exactly where to go for us to function properly, all encoded in our DNA. How many random point mutations it would take at the same time for us to learn how to interact with our environment? (Because one beneficial mutation, which is already rare, without a few thousand that go with it has no chance of being preserved in the genetic pool.) It doesn't seem like a billion years of evolution would do it...
Too bad I didn't pay enough attention in my stats class to actually calculate this.
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