[ExI] EP and scale

[Keith Henson]

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 4:29 AM,  Spencer Campbell <lacertilian at gmail.com> wrote:

>> > At first your hint seemed off-puttingly specific, but then I realized:
>> > yes, of course, you can say the same of just about all uniquely human
>> > behavior.
>
> I wrote that, not Will. Assuming that's what the parenthetical meant.
>
> Sorry for the delay, incidentally. Working through a huge backlog here.

Sorry for the misatribution.
>
> Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>:
>> People read and particularly post on mailing list to improve their
>> status in the eyes of their peers.
>
> Oh, yes. Makes sense. Surely you aren't implying that's the only
> reason, but I don't find it hard to believe that it's the main one.
>
> I wonder how one would go about curtailing status-seeking behavior in
> Extropy-Chat posts...

It's not obvious that you want to do that.  You very well may want
*rational* status-seeking behavior.

However, admitting that seeking status is a human motivation and that
I (being a human) was motivated by it (even if not consciously) got me
chastised from the bench by a federal judge.  Of course, federal
judges are spectacular examples of people who chose status over
income.

It seems "normals" don't like to know where there motivations come
from.  Exactly why is still a bit of a question.  Possibly it gets
into sex taboos since motivations come from reproductive success (over
evolutionary times).

> Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>:
>> Consider the coherence length and the size of a brain. ?At the speed
>> of light, how far can a signal get in 300 fs? ?How far for typical
>> nerve signal propagation speeds?
>
> There are those leading questions again.
>
> About 90 micrometers, for the former. I don't have time to look up the latter!

Takes all of 30 seconds
http://www.biologymad.com/NervousSystem/nerveimpulses.htm

At the fastest, 100m/sec or one part in 3 million of light speed.
90x10^-6/3x10^6 = 30x10^-12 meters, or .03 nm.  A water molecule is
close enough to 0.1 nm so the coherence length is small compared to a
water molecule at brain signal speeds.

Not saying that aspects of brains don't depend on QM effects, but the
numbers don't look good for coherence.

Keith