The Brain Explained: Thought Experiments Give Insight Into The Mind's Workings
Riddles and thought experiments provide a lot of insight into how our minds work. Humans work out problems differently in their heads, but these types of games, often theoretically impossible to solve, also have the potential to show us a lot about how we think.
In TopTenz’s new video, “Top 10 Most Famous Thought Experiments,” host Simon Whistler breaks down unique philosophical and theoretical physics-based experiments that offer insight into how our brains comprehend and solve problems.
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For example, are people born creative geniuses, or do they become artists if they're exposed to the right materials for a long enough time? The “infinite monkey theorem” — also known as the “monkeys and typewriters” experiment — illustrates the nature of infinity, which is a hard-to-grasp concept for the human mind.
“The theorem states that if an infinite number of monkeys were allowed to randomly hit keys on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, then at some point they would ‘almost surely’ produce the complete works of Shakespeare,” Whistler explains in the video.
Obviously this idea is impossible to re-create, but the theory is mathematically provable; statistical probabilities are key to figuring it out.
Want to know about more thought experiments and the insights they offer into the mind? Watch the video above.
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