- The human brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons.
- The Milky Way is estimated to contain about 200 billion stars.
- The observable universe has 200 billion galaxies.
- Apple's M3 Max chip has 97 billion transistors.
Is it a coincidence that these numbers are within the same order of magnitude, or does it say something about the evolution of complex systems?
But I think actually in this case it’s a false issue.
There were times when computer ships and fewer circuit elements and there will be times when they have more. So it’s just happens that you pick a moment in time and that is similar to the number of human neurons. It just becomes a matter of looking for any other numbers in science, that have to do with skill systems and aligning them. In this case, I don’t even think the choices are a good candidate because the causal interactions concerning astronomical scale seem very unrelated to the type of things that are happening in computer chips and neurons.
There is one very vague, sort of way they’re related. It has to do with the scale at which forces operate, and therefore perhaps naturally learn themselves to a particular scale of reductionism. The number of neurons in the human brain is related to how big a cell has to be, which is related to how big a molecule has to be, which is related to , the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and some facts about electrons. Whereas the maximum number of neurons is related to the size of a human being, which also has to do with the same underlying facts which determine the scale of biological organisms (where gravity also matters).
There is a similar relationship between subatomic facts and how big a star can be. Furthermore, the scale of galaxies and bigger aspects of the universe has to do with the speed of causal propagation of gravity, and that is the speed of light, and also contributes to how fast chemistry is and how well or not a brain of a certain size can work.
But Marvel at this set of relationships, if you really dig into it and show all the specifics, seems to be not particularly interesting and so far as if you have people and galaxies that know there’s going to be some relationship or other. I suppose the issue is whether when you tweak a bunch of things about the universe as it turned out all that is fine tuned or not.