From: Dan Clemmensen (Dan@Clemmensen.ShireNet.com)
Date: Sat Sep 27 1997 - 19:59:30 MDT
Nicholas Bostrom wrote:
>
> The Low Golden Willow wrote:
>
> > A large brain may require a large body, but by what I've skimmed from
> > Churchland a large body might well need a large brain to function.
> > There's a distorted map of your skin on the surface of your brain. More
> > skin, more map.
>
> I have often heard this argument, but I think it is wrong. Processing
> of tactile information takes up only a small fraction the cortex.
> Therefore, if we double body area, or the number of tactile
> receptors, and if we assume that this requires that tactile sensory
> cortex also doubles, this will mean that the total brain size only
> goes up by a percent or so.
>
Furthermore, the square-cube "law" means that the available brain
mass goes up as the cube of the linear dimesnion while the skin area
goes up as the square.
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