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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>One problem. You would have to have an equally
large 1 million fold increase in the speed of the person's actions. Working the
brain a million times faster does not help if the eyes can't move and refocus
fast enough to keep up, if they can;t communicate faster, and can;t get the
actual physical part of the "work" done a million times faster. Wouldn't you
just have a brain endlessly cycling while waiting for work to be
completed.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=sjatkins@mac.com href="mailto:sjatkins@mac.com">Samantha Atkins</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org
href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">ExI chat list</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, May 11, 2006 1:11
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [extropy-chat] Not necessary
smarter, just faster?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>These points seem to be missing something. A human level
brain running at, say, 140 IQ but a million times faster can accomplish 1
million man years of work per year and do so without the tremendous management
hassles and interpersonal friction of running a million person team.
That is huge. Many problems are quite tractable to a large scale effort
of that kind.
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>It also seems very likely that the neocortex would optimize many
problems faster and more fully when run at vastly higher speeds with
equivalently speeded up inputs. Such a brain would be smarter over time
and in much shorter time than otherwise. </DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>There were no unique neural structures found in Einstein's brain
AFAIK. </DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>- samantha</DIV>
<DIV><BR>
<DIV>
<DIV>On May 11, 2006, at 3:54 AM, Robert Bradbury wrote:</DIV><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BR>
<DIV><SPAN class=gmail_quote>On 5/11/06, <B class=gmail_sendername>Eugen
Leitl</B> <<A href="mailto:eugen@leitl.org">eugen@leitl.org</A>>
wrote:</SPAN><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid">You
can compensate a lot by hard work. Up to a point. Vide supra: the eternal
canine on fast-forward won't produce much than lots of happy barking,
virtually gnawn bones, and tail-chasing.</BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><BR>The problem with the "fast" canine example may be that the canine
brain may not have either the (a) the capacity; or (b) the proper internal
neural sub-nets to ever perform the function Einstein's brain did
(recognition of some rather unusual laws of physics). They might
however have the internal subnets to extract information from smell data
which humans completely lack. (Say for example the "claimed" ability
to be able to identify people who have cancer (or some types of cancer)
based on smell.) <BR><BR>Running a neural network faster doesn't make it
"better" at least for some things... A human brain on fast forward may still
have a problem doing what some precisely adapted neural nets (an octopus or
squid with highly precise sensory system processing and precision control of
multiple arms) are capable of. At the same time I don't believe those
neural networks aren't particularly good at algebraic (symbolic)
manipulation no matter how fast you run them.<BR><BR>Einstein's brain may
have had a unique neural structure so that it was able to make connections
or recognize patterns that other brains simply could not (at least very
easily). Having (a) more memory capacity (human vs. a dog for example)
or (b) better spatial manipulation capabilities ( e.g. those brains which
can solve a Rubik's Cube [1] very quickly) or (c) better language sequencing
capabilities (William Falkner comes to mind) may be things where faster does
not equal more creative. Though my general take on much "intelligence"
right now is that similar brains (with ~ equal capacity and structure) can
deal with almost anything given enough information, training and time.
Raw "speed" may help in getting from point A to point Z faster. It is
interesting to consider whether raw capacity (as compared to raw speed) is
essential for solving the Professor's Cube [2]. This brings to mind
space vs. speed trade offs in computer systems. <BR><BR>It raises the
interesting question as to whether Einstein would have been able to deduce a
"Theory of Everything" had his brain not been aging (over time brains do
lose neurons) and/or had he been given another hundred or two hundred years
to work on the problem? <BR><BR>Robert<BR>1. <A
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%2527s_Cube">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_Cube</A><BR>2.
<A
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor%2527s_Cube">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor%27s_Cube
</A><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR></DIV><BR></DIV>
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