On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 01:44:25AM -0700, Pierz wrote: > Yes. But I have to wonder what we're doing wrong, because any sophisticated > piece of modern software such as a modern OS or even this humble mailing > list/forum software we are using is already "hugely mind-bogglingly > incremental". It has evolved over decades of incremental improvement > involving thousands upon thousands of workers building up layers of > increasing abstraction from the unfriendly silicon goings-on down below. > And yet Siri, far from being a virtual Scarlett Johannson, is still pretty > much dumb as dog-shit (though she has some neat bits of crystallised > intelligence built in. Inspired by "She" I asked her what she was wearing, > and she said, "I can't tell you but it doesn't come off."). Well, I'm still > agnostic on "comp", so I don't have to decide whether this conspicuous > failure represents evidence against computationalism. I do however consider > the bullish predictions of the likes of Deutsch (and even our own dear > Bruno) that we shall be uploading our brains or something by the end of the > century or sooner to be deluded. Deutsch wrote once (BoI?) that the > computational power required for human intelligence is already present in a > modern laptop; we just haven't had the programming breakthrough yet. I > think that is preposterous and can hardly credit he actually believes it. >
It overstates the facts somewhat - a modern laptop is probably still about 3 orders of magnitude less powerful than a human brain, but with Moore's law, that gap will be closed in about 15 years. However, it is also true that having a 1000-fold more powerful computer does not get you human intelligence, so the programming breakthrough is still required. Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
