How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

by Ray Kurzweil

The operating principle of the neocortex is arguably the most important idea in the world, as it is capable of representing all knowledge and skills as well as creating new knowledge.

As MIT neuroscientist Sebastian Seung says, “Identity lies not in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells.”

Einstein articulated my goals in this book well when he said that “any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex…but it takes…a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”

And while we’re on the subject, just how many conscious minds do we have in our brain? There is evidence that suggests there may be more than one.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards. —Albert Einstein

We can recognize a pattern even if only part of it is perceived (seen, heard, felt) and even if it contains alterations. Our recognition ability is apparently able to detect invariant features of a pattern—characteristics that survive real-world variations.

we are constantly predicting the future and hypothesizing what we will experience. This expectation influences what we actually perceive. Predicting the future is actually the primary reason that we have a brain.

Is intelligence the goal, or even a goal, of biological evolution? Steven Pinker