ONE MINUTE BOOK REVIEWS — 14
Why You Should Read “A Thousand Brains” by Jeff Hawkins
A New Theory of Intelligence
In this groundbreaking book, Jeff Hawkins proposes a revolutionary theory on how our brain works. It is called the “Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence”.
Hawkins suggests our basic picture of how the brain works is wrong. We need a radically new approach to understand our brain.
In this new theory, Hawkins suggests the human brain is organized into thousands of individually computing units. These units are called cortical columns. These columns process information from the outside world and each builds a complete model of the world. However, each column has unique connections to the rest of the body, so each has a unique frame of reference.
The brain sorts out all these models and arrives at its own overall vote. So, our brain is composed of thousands of brains working independently in parallel.
The fundamental job of the brain is not to build a single thought. The job of the brain is to use maplike structures to sort out the thousands of individual thoughts every moment.
Our brain uses thousands of models to figure out everything that is known and observed.
