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5. Intelligence
– Ours and Others’
Cosmologists who subscribe to
the multiverse idea have followed the next logical line of questioning.
If we are only one universe of many, and such complexity as
our own intelligence can arise from simple rules, what other
intelligences might be out there? And what can we learn about
other intelligences by extrapolating from our own? At
present, our brains are the most complex thing that we know
of in the universe. It has taken nearly four billion years
of evolution to get from simple single-celled life to humans.
Our Sun has another six billion years before it dies in a
flare-up that promises to engulf all the planets around it,
including Earth. That’s another six billion years of
evolution – how much bigger could our brains possibly
get and how much more intelligent would that make us?
Neuroscientist Dr Michael Hofman of the
Netherlands Institute for Brain Research has compared the
brain structures of primates to try and understand what would
happen if our brains were to become much bigger. According
to Hofman, we humans have hit the limits of our intelligence
– if our brains got any bigger, they’d actually
get slower: ‘After a particular brain size, something
strange happens. There is some maximum in intelligence, in
processing power, in cognitive abilities, but beyond that
point you find a decrease.’
If we have reached a glass ceiling
in brain power, could we or other life forms in the universe
ever become more intelligent? Philosopher Dr Nick Bostrom
from Oxford University thinks so: ‘It’s not evolution
any longer, but it’s our cultural development that has
taken over … Scientific and technological and medical
development, that’s where the action is right now. If
we become more intelligent it is because we will learn to
use technology or maybe medicine, to enhance our intellectual
capacities.’
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