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People As Neurons
How we’ve accidentally engineered the next phase of humanity’s evolution, and why no one sees what is happening
The human brain is estimated to contain 10¹¹ neurons, each of which can have up to 20,000 connections with other neurons. Collectively, the brain enables us to create internal representations of the external world that enable us to navigate our environment and response with reasonable appropriateness to stimuli. The apparatus inside our heads converts electromagnetic radiation of certain frequencies into forms that help us interact with the world around us; hence we create “colors” as a way to distinguish between certain frequencies and we feel “heat” in response to other frequencies. Our brains convert certain pressure waves into “sounds” and we even position our pressure sensors on opposite sides of our head so as to have a general sense of the direction of the source of those pressure waves. We have neurons that respond to texture, and we call this “touch.” Other neurons take the electrostatic surfaces of molecules and convert them into signals we use to formulate “taste” and “smell.”
All of these sensations seem as obvious and as natural and as inevitable as the fact that we breath oxygen (a highly toxic gas that has terrible effects on a wide range of compounds, which is why even something as hard…
