[ExI] Unsolved problems

[Lee Corbin]

Keith writes

> One problem I can express, but have no idea of how to solve is the
> localization problem.
>
> There are a number of ways it can be expressed, the most general is
> that computation goes up at most as the cube of the linear dimensions
> while propagation delays (at best speed of light) goes up with the
> linear dimension.  Human smartness may be dependent on two dimensions,
> the area of the cortex.
>
> So a large chunk of computronium, if it is to be of "one mind" has to
> think slower than a smaller piece.

My own concern with this is that if we insist on being able
to think at least as quickly as we do now, (hoping we get
to be so lucky as to one day acquire a large computronium
mind), then there has to be a limit on the size of one's brain.
Otherwise, consulting a faraway part of my brain would feel
like looking something up on the web does now, thereby placing
a huge strain on my traditional and unconscious sense of self.

We had a discussion somewhat like this on SL4 a while back, and
Stuart Armstrong posted a link to Anders Sandberg's paper at

http://ftp.nada.kth.se/pub/home/asa/Work/Brains/Brains2/
As I wrote, "Anders doesn't have too much directly to say about what
kinds of identity transformations a human being would have to undergo
when becoming a Jupiter-sized Jupiter brain, but the last four paragraphs of
http://ftp.nada.kth.se/pub/home/asa/Work/Brains/Brains2/node14.html
are pertinent."

Here are two:

<The subjective effects of S depends on the application. For data retrieval and communication, it just creates a subjective delay
which may or may not be acceptable (a delay of a minute in delivering an email is usually acceptable; a one-minute delay in
delivering a frame of video is not acceptable). Subjective distances increase for very fast minds; for entities exploiting
nanosecond timescales at the speed of light distances of centimeters are significant, for femtosecond entities micrometers and for
nuclear entities femtometers. Structures larger than this will be ``large'' compared to the processes that go in them.

<For infomorphs, delays limit the physical distribution of their component processes: if they are too far apart, the being would
have to slow down its rate of subjective time in order to keep synchronized. Even if the processing is infinitely fast lightspeed
limits the speed of infomorphs if they wish to interact with the outside environment at a certain rate; since the human mind acts as
a whole on a time scale of hundreds of milliseconds, a human-like infomorph running at ``normal'' speed would at most be able to
extend 30,000 kilometers before the delays started to limit its speed.>

So I like to keep that figure in mind:  if I manage somehow to
survive this century (the XX was a snap, I only had to make
it to 52), then I'd like for some of me be these diameter
30,000km computronium gigs.

> This leads to a human being able to think rings around a "Jupiter
> brain" because of speed of light delays.

But only if it can't modularize some small reflex analogous
to that between your hot finger and your backbone, a "reflex"
that thus, at diameter 30,000 km, wouldn't have any trouble
actually thinking rings around any conventional human!

Lee

> It leads to multiple AIs rather than just one of them since local
> thinking will have a tendency to pinch off when the results of the
> rest of an AIs brain will not report in for hours.
>
> It leads to fundamental economics in that nearby resources are much
> more valuable than far away ones.
>
> Much of this is very familiar from biology in such terms as territoriality.
>
> And the problem is always cropping up in distributed computing.