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From: preece@uicsl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Parallelism and Conciousness - (nf)
Message-ID: <3677@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Nov-83 22:47:04 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.3677
Posted: Thu Nov  3 22:47:04 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Nov-83 01:56:24 EST
Lines: 29

#R:sri-arpa:-1299800:uicsl:15500014:000:1205
uicsl!preece    Nov  3 08:46:00 1983

Arguments based on speed of processing aren't acceptable.  The
question of whether parallel processing is required has to be
in the context of arbitrarily fast processors.  Thus you can't
talk about simultaneous inputs changing state at processor speed
(unless you're considering the interesting case where the input
is directly monitoring the processor itself and therefore
intrinsically as fast as the processor; in that case you can't
cope, but I'm not sure it's an interesting case with respect to
consciousness).

Consideration of the retina, on the other hand, brings up the
basic question of what is a parallel processor.  Is an input
latch (allowing delayed polling) or a multi-input averager a
parallel process or just part of the plumbing? We can also, of
course, group the input bits and assume an arbitrarily fast
processor dealing with the bits 64 (or 128 or 1 million) at a
time.

I don't think I'd be willing to say that intelligence or
consciousness can't be slow. On the other hand, I don't think
there's too much point to this argument, since it's pretty clear
that producing a given level of performance will be easier with
parallel processing.

scott preece
ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!preece