Nope!
That's it. That is
exactly what you are doing.
There is no reason for it.
Of course there is. As I've pointed out many times, its original use would have most likely been for strategic "virtual war gaming" prior to acting and borne out of the first time
tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago our cowardly ancestor picked up a pebble and grunted, "This me" and then picked up a rock and grunted "This lion" and a handful of others pebbles and grunted, "This all you guys."
He places the various
analogues into a circle he's drawn in the dirt--
representing the terrain down below in the valley where the lion is lurking--and then takes everyone through how they will help him do what the previous five or six stronger, braver but dumber warriors all tried and failed to do, because
they all just ran at the lion in brute force fashion one after another in exactly the same manner and all got brutally eviscerated for their
muscles over brains approach.
Aka, survival. Crude analogues at first, of course, but there you have it all in its most nascent form. The "map" of the external world is the circle drawn in the dirt; the analogues of the self and the distinctions of each of the others in the tribe as well as the lion all established separate and unique
identities among the group; the idea of moving the analogues around within the map to determine the best strategy for optimal success prior to acting in the "real" world, etc.
Everything "Grog" did on that fateful day is exactly what our brains do today--exactly what you and I (and others) have been talking about--only at a
much faster rate today and better graphics. Grog was like, Pong; today we're more like
one of these.
And the more we used this new adaptation of our already evolved problem solving/pattern recognizing ability (aka, abstract thought) in this manner, the better we got at it and the better defined the analogues (aka, the "self") became and so, over the thousands of years of honing and adapting and expanding this new tool it took us from a life expectancy of mere
hours, to days, then weeks, then months, then years then all the way up to this point where the average life expectancy is almost up to a
century.
And, of course, while that tool was being sharpened for use in our survival as a species--and we generated more and more leisure time as a result of less and less worry about being killed and eaten--we didn't need to use this adapted problem solving/pattern recognizing abstraction ability exclusively for survival and some started repurposing it for other things, such as art and philosophy and coming up with the zero, etc and, perhaps most importantly, social interaction.
Iow, it became an equally powerful tool for competing socially. Same tool, different song.
If the brain can do everything it wouldn't waste energy creating delusions.
It's not a "delusion." It's an analogue; a nano-second to nano-second real-time animation of a representation of ALL we are and have experienced and are in the moment experiencing--aka, our
identity--that allows us to better interact and communicate and express and make sense of all the shit that we each individually live through. It's basically an animated diary. Just the "important" stuff, without all of the other noise the brain has to deal with.
Iow, it's the brain constantly processing and distilling the trillions of bits of information it receives on a constant basis from all of our sensory input devices from the external world--as well as all of the trillions of bits of information it receives on a constant basis from all of our sensory input devices from the internal world; i.e., the condition of the organs and the bodily functions, etc--into just the essential stream of information necessary for optimal social interaction/survival.
It wouldn't create minds.
Selves. Analogues. Identity. The ghost in the machine. The "I" in
cogito, ergo sum. The homunculus.
Only it isn't actual, it's virtual; an algorithm or neuronal configuration, or however it is expressed and maintained. An abacus.
At least according to this overly simplistic quick
google article:
Although it is impossible to precisely calculate, it is postulated that the human brain operates at 1 exaFLOP, which is equivalent to a billion billion calculations per second.
...
[T]the brain is both hardware and software, whereas there is an inherent [difference] in computers. The same interconnected areas, linked by billions of neurons and perhaps trillions of glial cells, can perceive, interpret, store, analyze, and redistribute at the same time. Computers, by their very definition and fundamental design, have some parts for processing and others for memory; the brain doesn’t make that separation, which makes it hugely efficient.
The same calculations and processes that might take a computer a few millions steps can be achieved by a few hundred neuron transmissions, requiring far less energy and performing at a far greater efficiency. The amount of energy required to power computations by the world’s fastest supercomputer would be enough to power a building; the human brain achieves the same processing speeds from the same energy as is required to charge a dim lightbulb. Biological processes have had billions of years to evolve perfect, efficient organs that far supersede technology, and we are beginning to reach those artificial “limitations”.
One of the things that truly sets brains apart, aside from their clear advantage in raw computing power, is the flexibility that it displays. Essentially, the human brain can rewire itself, a feat more formally known as neuroplasticity. Neurons are able to disconnect and reconnect with others, and even change in their basic features, something that a carefully constructed computer cannot do.
We see this amazing transformative feat in a wide variety of brain functions, such as the formations of memory, knowledge acquisition, physical development, and even recovery from brain damage. When the brain identifies a more efficient or effective way to compute and function, it can morph and alter its physical and neuronal structure, hence the term “plasticity“.
And as this
Quora responder points out:
[The] biggest computer (“Summit”) has almost 2.3 million CPU cores, consumes 8.8 Megawatts of power and can perform 187,659,000,000,000,000 calculations per second.
The Human Brain contains hundreds of billions of Neurons, each with up to 10,000 interconnections to other Neurons - that’s over 1 QUADRILLION neural interconnections and dwarfs even the most powerful machine learning systems.
As noted above, one exaFLOP is a billion billion calculations per second (or one
quintillion calculations per second). To put that into better perspective, the "Summit" computer at Oak Ridge just recently broke the exaFLOP scale and can operate at 1.88 exaFLOPs (or about two
quintillion calculations per second). As their
website notes:
In one hour on Summit, we can solve a problem that would take 30 years on a desktop computer.
The point being, of course, that all the world is in our brains and we are merely players.
