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From: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Gordon Joly)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Continuous vs discrete
Message-ID: <1525@ucl-cs.uucp>
Date: 9 Apr 91 17:25:45 GMT
Sender: news@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Lines: 26

(DOCTOR J) Jon J Thaler writes:
 > [...]
 > I think there is a good analogy in physics.  There is a theory of the nuclear
 > interactions (QCD) which may be correct.  The equations are not wildly
 > complicated, but they are nonlinear.  As a consequence of the nonlinearity, the
 > theory cannot (yet) be used to compute even the simplest of phenomena.
 > Given this, how can we think that computer simulations can even begin to
 > provide a realistic model of the human brain, or any other "intelligence"

Are you saying that QCD is simple? The reason that QCD, quantum
gravity and all that is hard really has nothing to do with the
non-linearity. The reason, simply put, is that you cannot do power
series approximations (to the highly non-linear differential
equations) that do not blow up. So you subtract off an inifinity or
two, called renormalisation, and start again. Neat huh?

Forget that the brain is a large number of quarks, the SU(5) color
group and stuff like that (the meat of QCD)...

Gordon.

Gordon Joly                                       +44 71 387 7050 ext 3716
Internet: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk          UUCP: ...!{uunet,ukc}!ucl-cs!G.Joly
Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT

   "I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove anything!"