The Blank Page 1

The Blank Page 1 by Andrew Cairns

The page is blank but I will endeavour to fill it with writing.

How blank is a page really? Is it predestined to be written on, drawn on, destroyed or recycled? Or does the writer have total control

How blank is a new born baby (or earlier stage embryo)? Do the environment and genetic inheritance totally determine his personality, his actions, his thoughts? 

Do you have freedom of thought? What are the limits?  

100 billion neurons (give or take). 100 trillion synapses. At any one time, only about 10% of the neurons are actually "firing". [cf. 10⁸⁰ atoms in the universe].

10¹⁶ operations per second (10¹⁵ synapses operating at about 10 impulses/second)

60*60*24*365*80 = 2 522 880 000 seconds in a lifetime

=> 2.5 * 10²⁵ operations per lifetime (or thoughts)

Scraped from the net:

Massive oversimplification:

Consider that there are approximately 1 trillion neural connections in the human brain. For simplicity sake, assume that any given instant, each connection is either "on" or "off" (firing or not firing). Then the number of possible states is two raised the power of one trillion. That's a finite number, but even if humanity survived until the heat death of the universe, we couldn't exhaust a measurable fraction of the possible mental states.
posted by justkevin at 8:11 AM on January 23, 2006

Based on this simplification, possible thoughts (mental states for 1 human) : 2 to the power of 100 000 000 000 000 = approx 10⁴² operations

Implies 10¹⁷ lifetimes required to exhaust all possible thoughts.

i.e. 10⁵ trillion humans over the total lifespan of humanity (estimates are only 1.2 trillion Doomsday argument (DA)). Scraped from Wikipedia.

Assuming that the world population stabilizes at 10 billion and a life expectancy of 80 years, it can be estimated that the remaining 1140 billion humans will be born in 9120 years. cf 60 billion born so far.

If we survive another 5 billion years (estimated time left before the sun burns out) => approx 5 * 100 000 * 1000 billion humans = 5 * 10⁵ trillion humans would be able to exhaust 5 * the possible thoughts

Bit of a digression.

You would need to live 10⁵ trillion lifetimes to exhaust all possible thoughts (mental states).

So we can safely say - the limits are only imposed by the physical synapse limits of the brain, but within your lifetime you are free to have about 10²⁵ thoughts out of a possible 10⁴² - leaves a lot of scope.

So your brain offers you the possibility of freedom of thought, but your genetics and environment are heavily pounding the brain into certain thought patterns. 

If you could but for a few minutes escape all environmental and genetic restraints, then what would your brain be capable of? Huge originality. Perhaps this is why the most original thinkers / people who put their brains to the most original use have strange or 'damaged' brains - e.g. Einstein, people with Autism).