[ExI] sciam blog article

[Robin D Hanson]

On Mar 24, 2016, at 3:00 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com<mailto:johnkclark at gmail.com>> wrote:
On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com<mailto:foozler83 at gmail.com>> wrote:

​> ​
The Singularity and the Neural Code

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-singularity-and-the-neural-code/?WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20160323

Koch doubts, however, that the neural code “will be anything as simple and as universal as the genetic code.”

​Well, we don't yet know what the brain's master learning algorithm is but we can put upper limits on how complex that algorithm can be, and we know for a fact it can't be all that complex. In the entire human genome there are only 3 billion base pairs. There are 4 bases so each base can represent 2 bits, there are 8 bits per byte so that comes out to  750 meg. Just 750 meg!  And all that 750 meg certainly can be used just for the master learning software algorithm, you've got to leave room for instructions on how to build a human body as well as the brain hardware.  So the instructions MUST contain wiring instructions such as "wire a neuron up this way and then repeat that procedure exactly the same way 917 billion times". And the 750 meg isn't even efficiently coded, there is a ridiculous amount of redundancy in the human genome. So there is no way, absolutely no way, the algorithm can be very complex, and if Evolution could find it then it's just a matter of time before we do too.

You can code an awful lot of complexity into even 100MB of code, and if that is non-modular spaghetti object code instead of modular documented source code, it could take an awful long time to figure out.

Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu<mailto:rhanson at gmu.edu>
Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University
Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
See my new book: http://ageofem.com









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