Ray Kurzweil: Your Thoughts Create Your Brain | Big Think
Ray Kurzweil: Your Thoughts Create Your Brain
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The basic technologies to enable us to look inside the brain and see its functioning are growing exponentially. And they’re at a point now where we can actually see individual interneural connections forming and firing.
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Ray Kurzweil:
Raymond “Ray” Kurzweil (born 1948) is an American inventor and futurist. He is involved in fields as diverse as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism.
He has received nineteen honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents.
Ray has written six books, four of which have been national best sellers. The Age of Spiritual Machines has been translated into 9 languages and was the #1 best selling book on Amazon in science. Ray’s latest book, The Singularity is Near, was a New York Times best seller, and has been the #1 book on Amazon in both science and philosophy.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Ray Kurzweil: We’ve already shown that we can connect computers to neurons and we have neural implants. They’re actually pretty small. This Parkinson’s implant is pea-sized. It’s placed actually in the body and they connect it into the brain and you can download new software to that computer inside your body, connecting your brain from outside the patient.
That’s today. Another one of the exponential trends is that we’re shrinking technology. It’s actually a rate of about 103 volumes per decade. So at that rate, it won’t be pea-sized in 20 years. It’ll be blood cell sized and we can send them in through the blood stream.
Ultimately, we can send these in without surgery, but even with surgery we can tackle more serious brain dysfunction, which is already starting to happen and the latest generation are programmable machines and the Parkinson’s implant first was just connected to one spot and then two, then four, now they’re going for like hundreds of connections into the neocortex. So we see the same kind of exponential ramp up.
But if you’re really going to continue to make progress, you have to basically understand how the system works. It’s very hard to fix a vacuum cleaner if you don’t understand its method of operation. The design of the human brain is contained in the genome. I show in the book there’s only about 25 million bytes of design information in the genome pertaining to the brain. That’s a complicated derivation, but there’s not much data in the genome.
Well so how does 25 million bytes of design information create this entity with hundreds of trillions of connections through redundancy. There’s a great deal of repetition. It’s like saying, oh, a forest is much too complex a concept for us to understand because it’s got, you know, trillions of branches, there’s millions of trees, and every tree has lots of branches and every branch has lots of different twists and turns and how could we possibly understand that.
Well there’s some principles about how a forest is organized that we can understand and we can do – it’s actually easier to understand than the concept of a tree and I think the brain is easier to understand than the concept of a neuron. The basic technologies to enable us to look inside the brain and see its functioning are growing exponentially. And they’re at a point now where we can actually see individual interneural connections forming and firing.
We can see your brain creates your thoughts. We can see your thoughts create your brain ’cause that’s key to the secret of its operation that we actually create the connections that constitute the hierarchy of the neocortex from our own thoughts.
@drnickcampos
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
boring, Ray
@IntSpaceStation
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
The five massive rings. Ray, enlighten us what they do represent!
@internetthug509
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
He’s like a Human computer that is having glitches or something. Anybody else notice that?
@AZURA888
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
our brain is the connection with this world, yes, that undervalued and underrated 1.5kg of meat, if the brain is preserved of any way, no one will have to reincarnate as an intergalactic frog, in accordance With Some religions, and ¿who would want that?. That toad will not be you anymore, if you die here, you die in everywhere. Hold back the superstitions and employ the reason.
@mindcontrolfm
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
Youtube search: targeted individuals – and learn about brain implants. Looks fun.
@cinderwild
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
The title of this video was very misleading.
@PC160
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
Kurzweil's glib "explanations" of the human genome (he thinks it's digital memory) and the brain all revolve around his forced materialistic concept of the human brain.
What he never address is the NON-MATERIAL and, I would state, the most important fundamental and inarguable property of humans: the MIND. This he avoids, just as he avoids anything that cannot be described empirically. Yet the mind is the essence of the subject he purports to understand, but ignores. Consciousness is something that cannot be created in a non-living system, yet Kurzweil thinks there will be a Pinocchio "Blue Fairy" moment when this will happen, even though there is no evidence (the empirical kind he likes to refer to) that suggests anything approaching this. Merely creating machines that imitate, no matter how convincingly, human behavior, evades the issue of consciousness/mind. These machines follow code; they are adding machines, albeit highly sophisticated.
Kurzweil is a brilliant inventor, but he doesn't seem able to speak directly to consciousness, equating computational ability with "mind" (see his "How to Create a Mind" presentation), as he views the brain as a computational mechanism. He acknowledges that the evolutionary process adapts and improves the organism, but does not deal with the underlying force that moves that process, i.e., life itself. Consciousness is a function of a living biological entity.
@WeTheFuckinPeople
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
fool's a boss. rockin gold like a G keepin it way too fuckin real
@HenrySoderberg
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
I don't know how well Ray Kurzweil's longevity meds are working. He looks incredibly fake, add the massive rings, and he is from L.A.?
@dominikrohdepiur3322
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
I wonder if braingrowth (plasticity) has ever been meassured in an fMRI during aha moments eg.jokes or powerfull ideas?
@Abyssic1
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
this guy's last name is the german opposite of boredom…
@Mimotasis
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
Blown away
@TheOmaster100
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
maybe
@stuppidloggins2549
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
The operative word certainly is "believe" in your post. As in all religious people believe in their tenets irregardless of any evidence, facts or any kind of grounding in actual science. I personally believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, because I think it sounds really cool, but I also enjoy a lot of science fiction movies set in the future, just like clearly you do.
@ThisisRubbishlo
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
One day download myself into a machine. Small one lol
@ThisisRubbishlo
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
That's some Bling.
@traditionalviews6062
February 6, 2026 at 4:59 am
big think = small think. Such short fucking videos, i was hoping for 40 minute episodes.
@FuzzyDiceXX
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
I grew up with a computer and learning code. I can see that we are slowly working to create bio-machines. I cant wait to be a cyborg! 😉
@mistaroburtz3024
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
because the brain is nature's way of evolving a computer.
they're very similar: a binary code with simple processing ability. most of it is used as a metaphor for the layman
Life science outside of the brain is much less computer-like.
@chopper84a
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
Low data explained surely using fractals?
@JamesScottGuitar
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
Anyone finding it interesting the number of people now referring to Biological functions, and entities, with Computer based terminology, I.e.- Programs, bytes, etc..? "Science of Life" is quickly becoming known as a "Software Program."
@Ruzaraneh
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
so you can instal Software to the brain..
well i hope i have Google and Scientific Calculators
in my Brain…
@animalkindness
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
He looks sleepy, hes popping way to many pills for that life extension. he eager as hell
@RockVideoOfTheWeek
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
LOL. You're a silly person.
@RockVideoOfTheWeek
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
Literally everything that you just said was just a series of meaningless words. I have no idea what you are trying to say, especially in relation to my argument.
@MotoRhapsody
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
The way he speaks makes me sleepy
@RockVideoOfTheWeek
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
All of those things you said are forms of stimulating the brain to feel good in one way or another. You clearly didn't read my response very thoroughly. Regardless, I am not wrong, and neither are you. This is a philosophical argument, not a scientific one. An honest person would realize that no one is wrong here.
@RockVideoOfTheWeek
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
I don't much care for what's silly, I really care only about what's true. Whether or not it sounds silly, I think it makes sense. Each brain makes the decisions it does in accordance with reproduction and survival, because that's what the brain has evolved to do. You don't have a choice in the matter. Any conscious thought that that can transcend those primal actions are still done because that's just how our brain has evolved. You can apply that to a hero or someone with multiple personalities.
@RockVideoOfTheWeek
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
I agree, you are not separate from your brain. That's the point. You will do what you do because that's what would have happened anyways. You are a product of the laws of nature, nothing more.
@RockVideoOfTheWeek
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
Your brain will make you duck, because that reaction follows the way your brain is set up brought about by the laws of the universe.
@RockVideoOfTheWeek
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
The neurons in your brain fire in any way they want, regardless of your intervention. You are the neurons firing in your brain. I think that everything that is happening is only happening because that's just what it does. You will most likely dodge the brick, and if you don't it will be because that's just what happened. You are not separate from your actions.
@mathieuvilleneuve9478
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
amaze
@RockVideoOfTheWeek
February 6, 2026 at 5:00 am
And your brain creates your thoughts. So you really have no control over the matter.
Comments are closed.