[ExI] Slow thinking

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, Oct 01, 2011 at 09:50:10AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote:

> >>.It would have 10^15 times more memory than a human, and be able to think
> > about 10^15 times more things at the same time than a human. John K Clark
> 
> Not impressed.  You are talking about something that isn't that far
> off of the present where we have ~10^10 people and with access to
> information on that kind of multiple through the internet.

Solar output output seems good for some 10^24 to 10^25 human equivalents,
and probably at significant speedup to boot.

> Human clock rate is perhaps 200 Hz.  I don't know where computers will

Humans have no clock, actually. The time domain of most neural processes
is roughly in ms range, some of maybe slightly lower (particularly, if
you're a bat).

> limit, but we are already GHz rates, if we get up to 200 GHz, latency

How long does your computer take to stream once through its entire main core?
Somewhere between 1-10 Hz. Now add random access. Maybe some 0.1-0.01 Hz. 
Now add not mere GBytes, but a data structure loosely equivalent to the 
network between your ears. Not so many fHz, now.

> becomes a big problem with maximum dimensions for a brain being in the
> mm range and the subjective time to get a message back from the far
> side of an MBrain is 40,000 years.  All of a sudden, galactic

Are you often concerned what happens somewhere in a particular location in
a particular time in Australian outback, or African veldt? Which animals is 
munching on that particular blade of grass? Why did that rice sack
topple in a street crossing in Baoshan? You likely don't know, and very likely
don't care.

> communication problems have come to the solar system.

You call it communication, I call it living.
 
> Power, cooling and speed of light delays all conspire against brains
> or even civilizations being physically large if they are running at
> high clock rates.  Round trip to the moon is about 2.5 seconds.  At an
> easy million to one subjective speed up, it would take about 29 days
> to get a message back.  Even the 60 ms low latency optical fibers from
> New York to London would seem like 16 hours.
> 
> It occurred to me just now that this is an alternative answer to the
> Fermi question.  Once intelligent life forms start moving into faster
> hardware, it may be that they can't leave their home planet without
> getting hopelessly out of touch with whatever is going on.

I haven't yet heard that particular objection. This week, I mean.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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