Basically, china has a population of around 1b, which is also roughly how many neurons we have in the human brain. If we fully understood each neuron, and told each human the rules to follow, could we make a brain out of other people who have brains? It seems crazy to have a brain be the size of china when they are usually so small, and yet, why not?
I think an extra dimension could be added if each individual person (node) could communicate with any other node, using a cellphone. Can brains do that now, or do they play telephone with messages?
Thanks for mentioning this thought experiment. It's making me think.
Not sure about disconnected neurons, but this made me think about our electronic communication, the ability for any one of us to effortlessly reach thousands or millions of people (like I do by just writing this comment). There is a biological equivalent of that in real brains: epileptic seizures. Perhaps the meta-consciousness of humanity is having an attack right now.