Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 00:29:59 -0500
From: Jeff Wilson 
Subject: (urth) Re: Digest from  urth@urth.net

> Subject: Re: (urth) Mr Million v Oreb
> Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 08:49:07 +0100
> From: "Andy Robertson" 
> Reply-To: urth@urth.net
> To: 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jeff Wilson" 
> >
> >>There are numerous documented cases of microcephalics with normal mental
> >>functionality; a lot of the human brain is redundant, something that is
> >>mentioned as a performance boosting factor in "5HC".
> 
> I am begnning to have serious doubts about the "numerous microcephalics"
> being true, and I'd appreciate a link to a primary source (not a dodgy
> populist like Sagan).   I have chased these rumors up before and they seem
> to come to nothing, or to ignore the fact that the "normal" person in fact
> has serious behavioral deficiencies, though they may score averaage on an IQ
> test.   But I bow to correction on this point.

Sure, the microcephalics may have problems, but then so does Oreb; he
can't put more than two syllables together.
 
> I agree that a human brain can work at half human size.  After all, children
> manage!   But not at 1/10 or 1/40 human size.

Being a populist doesn't mean your figures are to be dismissed out of
hand; for instance, Guinness. In fact, let's look at Guinness: the
photograph of the tiniest woman shows almost normal proportions on a
woman who's what, 29" tall? 

> >. However, almost 10 years ago,
> > Pentium processors with 3.3 million transistors were running at 100
> > megahertz, for 3.3 x 10^14 switching events a second, and just consuming
> > a few watts.
> >
> > Ray Kurzweil writes on this sort of comparison extensively; at current
> > rate of development, computers will approach the complexity of the human
> > brain in terms of informational and interconnected capacity in about 30
> > years.
> 
> Thanks for the correction.   But the "30 years to equality" figure is one I
> have heard before. Indeed I was hearing it 30 years ago, and  I suspect we
> will be hearing it 30 years from now.

You must be thinking of something else, like "Fusion in 10 years."
Kurzweil's prediction is based on Moore's Law vs. the physical biology
of the brain; neither has been dramatically revised in decades. 

-- 
Jeff Wilson
How Am I Posting? 1-800-555-6789
"If your SecOp can see you, so can the enemy." -Cpt Law


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