''Someone who 100 years ago would have tried to explain to his grandmother how the human brain works, wouldn't have said something really different than someone who would try it nowadays.'' - Henry Makram, founder of the Human Brain Project. Keep in mind there are 100.000 scientific articles related to the brain released each year. This just shows how hard it is to understand the human brain. Allthough I understand that most of you think it will bring us alot of new data, which I am certain it will, I still believe they should begin with understanding and replicating a certain part of the brain like the part that takes care ouf our memories.
The human brain has 10 billion neutrons and each of these neutrons is connected to another 10.000 neutrons. That means that we are talking about 100 trillion connections. That's a 100 times more then the total links on the internet measured in the year 2008. I just want to show you the complexity and the scale we are talking about here.
A similar project, the Human Genome Project, was finished in 2003 and like this project promised to better understand the brains and that it would lead to the cure of many diseases, from Alzheimer to obesitas to depressions. But when it was completed, the usage of it turned out be alot less then scientists had expected.
And last but not least, Henry Makram also said the one billion euro's they want is only the beginning.
''We will need alot of money.'', he said. How much exactly they would need, he didn't say. But if the one billion is only the beginning, this project could turn into a multi billion dollar project.
Also this project is one of the six contesting projects that are competing for this one billion dollar grant. I checked the other too and the one that appealed to me the most, both in ways of usage and achievability is the FuturICT. A tl;dr version of this project: ''This initiative is seeking to develop Information and Communications Technologies that will provide scientists, governmental officials and citizens with a planetary scale computer which is called a Living Earth Platform. The Living Earth Platform will provide the means of analysing data and managing complex events. It could for example provide a basis for predicting natural disasters, or managing and responding to man-made disasters that cross national borders or even continents.''
And this ladies and gentlemen is why I don't support the Human Brain Project. It is not because I don't want them to succeed, on the contrary, I hope they will succeed with this project some time. But they will need to find another funder. I would love to see the medical and military industry contribute to the costs needed for this project. They are the two industries that will benefit the most from it.
It has nothing to do with with closed minded and ignorant (curve.) and it has nothing to do with not willing to learn by failure. I know the research would bring us alot of information, even if it the project won't turn out like they want it to be. But because I don' think they'll deliver that they promise, the costs are huge and it is not clear how much they will and there is a better project in terms of achievability and usage, I do not support it.
Ladies and gentleman, I rest my case. I just got home from a 10 hour workday and it is time for me to sleep. Peace out
Crumpets for Pres
