Having lots of connections may be important to Intelligence, but the brain is a knotted mess of connections. It's the knotted part that I am objecting.

There seem to be some interesting mechanisms that arise due to the mess. The author mentions that delays, rather than viewed as a problem, can be viewed as something that conveys additional information about the environment.

These delays are a result of the complexity. Sure, replicating the knotted mess might not be an approach that works, but using the mechanisms that arise in the brain to handle complexity would be very useful.

I think they might be arguing against un-knowability as having the opportunity to perform structural and load bearing functionality. Nature works so well because there's no watch-maker, nobody has to have a finite set of skills, time perception, or model to create something useful/interesting/adaptive like a mind and body complex.

> Having lots of connections may be important to Intelligence, but the brain is a knotted mess of connections.

Ok, thank you for the clarification. I still don't see why that's a problem for you. Is it your intuition? Practical experience? Academic knowledge?

I for one am pretty generous with what I think it takes for intelligence, or for that matter the universe its self, to emerge. I don't think the universe is at all constrained by our imagination.