[extropy-chat] Clock rate or rather communication delays

[Keith Henson]

At 07:06 PM 5/7/2006 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>On Sun, May 07, 2006 at 10:43:31AM -0400, Keith Henson wrote:
>
> > It *is* a way to avoid boredom while you wait for the end of the universe.
>
>Living beings know no boredom. Co-evolutionary pressure will require
>everybody running at the fastest rates (not clocks, global clocks don't
>exist), after just a few iterations. Sartre would have said something
>about others making you optimize for Ops/s instead of Ops/J

As a bet you are not an engineer.  Getting rid of waste heat is the bane of 
engineers.

> > At warp 8 (slowing your clock by 10 exp -8) and .5 c, you can cross the
> > galaxy in a subjective 8 hours while you watch 1000 super novas twinkle.
>
>If you're travelling at mere 0.5 c, you will be overtaken in transit
>by later but faster others, and won't arrive at the target you set
>out to arrive.

That was just to put a number on it, but in fact, some speed short of c, 
perhaps way short, may be as fast as it is practical to go.  Depends on how 
much dust you run into.

> > Subjective time is an element of AIs.  If you knew how to do it at all, 
> you
> > could implement an AI on an Apple II.  But I would not expect it to do 
> well
>
>Everybody has been claiming AI needs only 5 MIPS, but I must admit 2 MHz 6502
>is a genuine novelty.

Any reasonable computer can emulate another.  Of course the performance 
might really suck.

> > on a timed intelligence test.
>
>An Apple ][ might not do too badly -- against a virus.
>
> > The point being that speed of light and the size of processor elements
> > (ultimately the granularity of atoms) will interact to limit the largest
> > practical size of an AI's hardware.
>
>There are always limits. Not nearly as tight limits as biology currently
>suffers (~120 m/s, ~1 l, ~20 W). Superpersonal organization levels allow you
>to synchronize loosely (but at a very high level), while achieving 
>full-realtime
>personal response. Including some primitive but meaningful response at the 
>um/ps level.

um I am not sure of.  If ps is pico second, I really don't understand.

> > And I would bet that limit is a good deal smaller than Jupiter.
>
>I'm sure procaryontes would have considered our brain something quite
>impossible. Nevertheless, here we are, and busily organizing
>ourselves at the ~lightsecond level, reaching out towards ~lighthour
>level.
>
>I honestly don't share your disappointment. Yes, there will be limits.
>But nothing like the limits we're currently laboring under.

Oh I am not disappointed.  Wasn't interested in becoming a "Jupiter brain," 
just thought the notion was silly.

And if you agree that there are any limits at all, you are in my camp 
because that argues for more than one AI.

Keith