If you were ever curious about the wonders of the human mind and fancy some intriguing theories about how we will evolve in the future versus AI, then this book is for you. The future of the mind. The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku is a fantastic reading. It made me gasp a big wow at the end of every chapter. It's impossible not to fall in love with the mind of the author and ask yourself all sorts of questions in parallel. I am a proud nerd and I am always stimulated greatly by curious minds. This is a must have book for all nerds out there
The contents of the book include book 1: the mind and consciousness, book 2: mind over matter and book 3: altered consciousness.
You will read about compelling deep brain stimulation used to treat Parkinson, depression. Also optogenetics is a new field, where you can activate certain pathways controlling behavior by shining a light beam on the brain. Yes, you've read it right :light therapy has proven excellent for treating diseases, in some cases it did better than pills. It is a very new field and research is still young.
How about memories? Surprisingly, we might be able to experience things that we have seen in the movies. In 2011 scientists managed to record a memory made by mice and store it digitally in a computer. And if this isn't enough, in 2013, at MIT, researchers have been able to implant not only ordinary memories in a mouse but also false ones. Will we live a future where a machine might be able to do the dirty job of erasing memories? I remember one of my favourite movies Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I must say that it gives me chills to think that someday fiction might become reality. The ethics of this is very debatable. Would you erase some of your memories, would you plant new ones if you could? Imagine tapping a button at the back of your neck like Neo and download all of the information that you need, could this be reality? And if it could, would you embrace it?
What frustrates scientists the most is the mystery of the mind. We have yet managed to do a complete map of the brain. We still have areas in the mind scientists have no clue what they do and how they do it. We barely managed to create artificial cerebellum for rats and robots can't even grab/use a pen in a way that a person does.
Michio also talks about dreams/lucid dreams. Do you know that animals that are deprived of dreaming die soon after? Dreaming has a key role in our mental health, we spend about six years dreaming and in the future it might be possible to enter another person's dream by directly connecting two sleeping brains. Does this sound scary and intriguing? Good, this books delivers just the kind of wake - you - up- pill page after page.
What I really liked as a theory and I think it would be spectacular if scientists would make rapid progress is happening in the field of mental illness. Depression, ocd, bipolar disorder, paranoia, schizophrenia, all of these could be treated at neural level with the help of genetic research. The same applies for epilepsy, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
The end of the book is about robots. Will robots control us one day? Should there be laws and ethics for the intelligent machines? Will we merge or will we fall? Very interesting theories are being discussed and I suggest you to have a look, you'll be blown away.
I selected a couple of great quotes and hopefully they will inspire to get this book and feed your mind. Yum yum
-The human genome consists of roughly twenty-three thousand genes, yet it can somehow create the brain, which consists of one hundred billion neurons. It seems to be a mathematical impossibility to create the human brain from our genes, yet it happens every time an embryo is conceived. How can so much information be crammed into something so small?
-This fine-tuning extends to every atom of the body. Physics say that we are made of star dust, that the atoms we see all around us were forged in the heat of a star. We are literally children of the stars
-Children today who go to exclusive private schools and have personal tutors are better prepared for the job market because they have more opportunities to master difficult materials. But if everyone has had their intelligence enhanced, the fault lines within society will be evened out. Then how far someone goes in life would be more related to their drive, ambition, imagination, and resourcefulness rather than to being born with a silver spoon in their mouth
-Perhaps one day the mind will not only be free of its material body, it will also be able to explore the universe as a being of pure energy. The idea that consciousness will one day be free to roam among the stars is the ultimate dream. As incredible as it may sound, this is well within the laws of physics.