Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: gjf00@duts.ccc.amdahl.com (Gordon Freedman) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Some problems of super-intelligence Message-ID: Date: 13 Dec 90 21:34:25 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA Lines: 74 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) writes: > Lots of good stuff deleted ... > >3. Speeding up the brain would be equivalent to locking the hapless >entity into a prison of agonizing slowness. Surrounding phenomena, >as well as the entity's own physical mobility, would effectively slow >down by 1e+6 times. Imagine living in a world where reaching out your >arm and picking up an object for inspection takes not 1 second of >perceived time, but 1e+6 seconds = 11.6 days. By the time the object >was where you wanted it, would you still remember why you wanted to >pick it up in the first place? (Remember, you went through over 10 >sleep/wake cycles in the meantime.) How long can a person sit still >without going nuts? This would be like being paralyzed. > > More good stuff deleted ... >-- >Dan Mocsny Snail: >Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171 > dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu University of Cincinnati >513/751-6824 (home) 513/556-2007 (lab) Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0171 > >[As you note, speeding the brain up is not "simple" in some absolute > sense. However, even with all the quite valid complications you have > pointed out, it is vastly simpler than changing the organization of > the brain to obtain enhanced intelligence. > --JoSH] The thought occurs to me that rather than speeding up the brain ALL the time, it might be useful to have the capability to speed it up sometimes. Normally, you would run in "real time", so you wouldn't go nuts with a world running at 1e-6 slower. When you were trying to absorb knowledge (through some as-yet-unknown brain to information source link) you could speed yourself up, just as you might when trying to remember a complicated algorithm. And of course, if I was skidding on a sheet of ice in a storm in my car (or on my bicycle), it would be nice for me to speed up my brain so it took 30 seconds for me to regain control, rather than 2 seconds for me to crash. Of course, that implies being able to speed up/slow down across a range, if it was a binary fast/normal switch, I don't think I'd like to spend 11 days sliding around on the ice (although you'd have a lot of time to compare snowflakes and see if they really are ALL different :-) Another thing that comes to mind is the ability to create something which then links to our brain (or becomes "part" of our brains). There is a lot of parallel processing going on in the brain, besides cognition, there is visual recognition, etc. Having other offload engines in the brain to remember everybody's name (and favorite food and what grade their kids are in, ...), and to run alarms (always forget people's birthdays and to go to meetings myself) could be pretty useful. These processors could run pretty damn fast without driving you nuts. I know I'm getting off the point a little here, but this posting made me think of these things. I'm interested in combining human intelligence with computer "intelligence" (!?), things like putting a chip in my head to monitor whether or not I'm getting enough protein, carbos, whether I'm getting sick, when I need more sleep, etc. as well as putting communication directly into our heads (imagine you are sleeping and somebody "calls" you, not at any certain telephone where you may or may not be, but calls YOU, wherever you are. Then a dream analog comes to you and informs you of the call, you can have a prerecorded message play to that specific caller, "dream" up a message on the spot, wake up and talk to them, or have told the "phone" chip not to bother you at all). It is possible we could accomplish these things using our own existing brains with or without physical modifications, or we could enhance our brains with "chips" (silicon, biological, whatever). It implies A LOT of technology and understanding and has MASSIVE ramifications on the way we live. If we are going to apply nanotechnology to the brain, these are some of the things we could possibly do. Or than again, maybe I've been reading too much W.T. Quick (anybody read dreams of Flesh and Sand?) -- Gordon Freedman: gjf00@duts.ccc.amdahl.com Disclaimer: My opinions! Not my employers!