'The True Creator of Everything' - A Guiding Work for the Ongoing Development of the Human Universe
It is a deeply convicted personal goal of mine to, in the course of my lifetime, compose a book of such substance and meaning that it carries my thoughts well beyond the scope of my life; This is something that Miguel Nicolelis has accomplished with 'The True Creator of Everything', not only as the distinguished neuroscientist that he is, but as a human, pondering the infinite caverns of our own consciousness and its meaning. In accordance with this book, it would seem to be the pinnacle achievement of any human life to leave a lasting mental impression on future generations - to build the human universe, impacting its growth and direction for the entire species... and I should start by saying that for any person with intellectual curiosity about the workings of the human mind/brain - this book's scope and its considerations may test the range of one's contemplation. This book almost requires quite a bit of prerequisite knowledge in the way of gross neuroanatomy and physiology, engineering level exposure to physics and chemistry, collegiate philosophy, electrical engineering as well as computational theory in order to make sense of it - it's a book written by neuroscientists, for neuroscientists. It ultimately works to redefine the human universe as centered around our consciousness. This theme, woven throughout is introduced and analyzed through lenses of history, art, science, technology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, philosophy - and hearkens back and forth across these many distributed concepts/abilities that humanity and its minds possess in order to build the case for the human mind as the 'True Creator of Everything'.
Human Consciousness and Psychological 'Normalcy' as emergent properties of Electromagnetic Fields Generated by Neural Activity and more Mind Bending Thoughts
Nicolelis's key assertions are stark, futurist, and yet compelling when presented with context from the historical musings of great thinkers and philosophers alongside his lifetime of work experience. Though broad and requiring quite a bit of explanation, a few major points can be summarized as follows:
1. Synchrony between our bodily senses and our consciousness, and the time-space continuum we experience in our lives are potentially emergent properties of magnetic fields and other 'analog signals' created by white matter neuron bundles in the brain.
2. A system like our minds, cannot create a system more complex than itself (e.g. the 'singularity' and emergence of high fidelity artificial intelligence cannot be accomplished by human minds until our own systems are fully understood).
3. Human perception constructs our reality in its entirety, and likely there is likely a different reality (chaotic, uncertain, infinitely swarming entropy/information) that we cannot perceive outside of the reality of our own creation - until we continue to discover it.
4. Our minds being dynamic, indeterminate complex systems which are ever changing entropically are able to process, handle, and encode 'Goedelian' information (similar to context, or all the information taken in as dynamic variables which influence a predicted but indeterminate future state of being being perceived and analyzed by the mind) in their interactions with the environment which is of a unique order compared to 'Shannon' information (e.g. digital signals, fully determinate).
5. Many Psychological issues may have their pathologies rooted in disruptions or disorders of the electromagnetic fields created by signal transmission along our 'biological solenoids' (Nicolelis terms for the white matter loops connecting cortical and subcortical structures in the brain).
Each and every one of the thirteen chapters written is jam-packed with profound and often poignant reflections on the mind, and there are more than can be covered here (or even fully elucidated in the book for that matter). Ultimately this serves to illustrate to some degree the furious mind-storm of thoughts that belongs to the author, and the potential for each human mind to reach ever heightened levels of insight over time.
The Threat of Reduced Intellect
Upon reading of the myriad component abilities of the mind that combined to allow humans to gain hegemony over their individual tribes' environments, then the Earth, and eventually the ongoing domination of space beyond our humble biosphere - It is clear that this last and coming feat will require the evolution of even greater abilities by the species as a whole. The acceleration of learning, improvements in memory, genetic engineering or biohacking to create better bodies and enhanced or novel 'senses' will be major themes for the evolution of the human mind in order to improve our collective fortunes further. These are uphill struggles which will require ongoing discovery, creation and passage of information between generations for our species. However, our memories and mental abilities are under threat as Nicolelis proposes in the last few chapters, threats stemming from laziness, simplification, and commodification of thoughts controlling the way human minds are formed en masse. Nicolelis dares here to take a stab at massive social implications related to the human mind centric view of the universe and let out a warning call that we not be complacent as a species - having fulfilled our needs for survival. It is clear to me after reading the later few chapter that we must strive to continue improving and passing along the best information to future generations in order to evolve, as individual minds only have so much time to learn, share, and pass information.
A topic that I wish had been further explored in this book with regards to the learning and storing of information which makes up so much of the ordinary brain state is neuroplasticity - in its normal, and abnormal or impaired forms. The 'electromagnetic storms' and signals that compose the entirety of our thoughts etch their story into our memories and shape our minds, affecting our conscious and subconscious thoughts. I believe that the field of neuroscience still has much to learn in this regard about minimum biological requirements of activity for certain components of memory. Though Nicolelis didn't cover the topic much in this writing, there is plenty of primary work being done in this regard available for study.
Why Should We Care? Why Do We Carry Forward These Thoughts?
Understanding the nature of our brains, their magnificent possibilities, as well as their defining limitations are critical for any serious personal and professional pursuit in coming years. Mankind and human societies are reaching ever more stratified social and economic structures, and the evolution of the dominant mental abstractions that set these structures into play and control our lives will not be shaken unless we are conscious of the fact that the human mind is, and should be, the penultimate arbiter of the high level mental abstractions that govern our world. This is a book that seeks to attribute the destiny of mankind, from past to present - to its own doing, in order to guide the future. The implications of this human mind centric framework of thought can apply to every single aspect of our lives. This is a book that can be a paradigm shift in the entirety of a person's life, and hopefully in the lives of many. Reading this book with an open mind can inspire, and alter reader's life trajectories to take ownership of their lives as best they can. It encourages us to independently hone and guide their thoughts to become our fullest selves, every day. The mind, standing in wonder and awe of itself and its creation - has so much more to explore and create. Onward for future growth.
-Sam Vallagomesa