"How many beliefs could a perfect brain check for logical contradictions? The answer is surprising. even if a computer were as large as the known universe, built of components no larger than protons, with switching speeds as fast as the speed of light, all laboring in parallel from the moment of the big bang up to the present, it would still be fighting to add a 300th belief to the list." --From The End of Faith by Sam Harris (see also Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge by William Poundstone, which Harris cites for this idea)
Speaking of contradictions, the clue to this unintuitive puzzle may be that Harris is comparing apples and oranges. He begins with "a perfect brain" and continues with "a computer...as large as the known universe". It could be that one of the ways a brain is distinct from a computer is that a brain is capable of reconciling competing beliefs and resolving contradictions in a way that a computer is too literal to manage.
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