Comic #7168: neurons

Description

Here’s a detailed, accessible description of the comic:

Panel 1:

Text: "Do you think we'll ever understand the human brain?"
Speaker: A bearded man on the left, looking contemplative.
Response: A woman with glasses and long hair on the right replies, "No. Scaling laws forbid it."

Panel 2:

Text: "With a huge effort, an 86 billion neuron human brain can perfectly comprehend the 302 neurons of the roundworm, C. elegans."
Visual: The woman still speaks, her expression serious. The background shows a landscape, possibly a beach or cliffside.

Panel 3:

Text: "That suggests you need a factor of 10^18 more neurons to fully understand another brain."
Visual: The focus is on the woman as she explains.

Panel 4:

Text: "So, one day we will build a computer with the equivalent of 8.6 quintillion neurons, and it will perfectly fathom our minds."
Visual: A view of two figures in the distance, possibly representing the complexity of thought.

Panel 5:

Text: "Meantime, we live highly social lives despite no rich sense of our friends or our own mental workings, forced to rely on ludicrously blunt concepts like 'she's acting weird' or 'he's grumpy today.'"
Visual: The scene shows a wider shot of the characters.

Panel 6:

Panel 7:

Text: "Physics permits beings who completely understand us, but only if they're so powerful that they probably won't care about us."
Visual: The man with the beard nods, deep in thought.

Panel 8:

Text: "This is how I became religious."
Visual: The woman gestures as she makes this statement, and the panel concludes with a humorous tone.

This description provides a clear understanding of the dialogue and character interactions, while maintaining accessibility for all readers.