Dna Computers

[Fallen Angel]

Originally posted by GreatWyrm of Babylon@Sep 1 2003, 01:49 AM I thought that some logic was too obvious to point out, but I guess I was in error. So here is a list. #1 If Pandora's Box is already open how do we open it again? #2 If it is radiation that qualifies the A-bomb, please note that the sun is radioactive and has been shining a while. #3 If it is the killing potential, religion has killed more people that all the nuclear weapons ever dropped, so it is not the biggest killer. Special note: We discovered nuclear energy we did not invent it. The implications existed before we were able to measure them.

In the case of Pandoras box being opened, I put it to you that once something is discovered it is not fogotten, this is very unfortunate for the human race in the case of nuclear (WOMD).
No nation in the world enjoys any real security anymore no matter how many drugs our poor kids hide in now.
At least in the Cold war there was a check on the madness, now with the Soviet union gone the weapons are every where, personally, I don't give us that much longer,I mean hopefully the human race will come out of it and pick up the pieces, but the present world order will be gone with I'm sorry to say probably the US and Europe suffering a fair bit of damage.
The Middle East could be wiped out.

The suns radiation is unfortunate for us , but if we didnt have it we would have no heat.
A major nuclear device like a H-bomb catching you at Ground Zero would eraze your existance in a micro second, its heat would blow your skin up into one gigantic balloon like blister if you were within 4 km outside the vicinity of Ground zero, depending on wind patterns its radiation could also probably kill anyone in its fallout path in the next few weeks.
If this happened enmasse around the world you would also get the nuclear winter.
A little bit different from sunburn don't you think?

Religon has been one of the major causes of Death, as has epidemics, pandemics and believe it or not fleas off rats, Bubonic plague it was called.
Do you think WW2 was caused by religous issues?

We invented the nuclear bomb, according to our modern knowledge it did not exist until Robert Oppenheimer tested the first one in 1945 in New Mexico.
And it is with great regret I add, the scientists unbelievably had no idea how big and dangerous the weapon was until it was fully tested.

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

Fallen
I am an adult with full knowedge of those things I speak of, not a child for you to scare with the bogeyman. You have told me nothing I do not know, but only tried to BS me into believing that two absolutes can exist at once, when I will not accept one.

[zkreso]

The analogy with the A-bomb being a Pandora's Box doesn't work for me, because with the A-bomb we "knew what was inside" ;)

[Pooeypants]

Originally posted by Jim@Sep 1 2003, 06:23 AM If a weapon that can end all life on a planet isn't a pandora's box in your book, GreatWyrm, what is? Also, you weren't insulted, that was an argument to your argument. But back to the topic at hand. Just because a computer if fast and has a large memory doesn't mean it would be conscious (whatever that is). It would just mean it's fast. Would a DNA computer evolve? Only if it copied itself and the copying were imperfect. Since computers need to be very exact, I do not see how errors in translation would be beneficial, ever, nor do I see why a computer would copy itself. A diamond CPU was made recently that ran at about 100 gHz. That's 50 times faster than my computer. They could feasably be mass produced a decade from now. And they will be, since we're reaching the limit that silicon can go to, for if processors run much faster they will get hotter, and the silicon will melt. Wired Article on Diamonds and Diamond Computing

That isn't the key problem to this. Eventually we will reach the atomic level (as transistor width decreases), then we'll have to start building in 3d

[Fallen Angel]

Originally posted by zkreso@Sep 1 2003, 03:57 PM The analogy with the A-bomb being a Pandora's Box doesn't work for me, because with the A-bomb we "knew what was inside"

Actually they had no idea, and if you read the bottom of my last post trying to educate Great Wyrm, what I saw in a documentary back in the good old eightys, was that the Scientists working on the Manhatten project were uncertain or not if the splitting of enough atoms could actually set off a chain reaction to every atom in the world, this speculation was still in thought when they went ahead with the tests anyway.
In other words they knew they had an incredibly powerful weapon here, but they still did'nt know for sure how powerful, but that did'nt stop them, so to sum up the Pandora box analogy Zkreso, they really did'nt fully know, what was inside.

[Geoff332]

The average computer is already a significantly faster linear processor of information than the human brain. But computers today are not intelligent. Sure, some of the better ones mimic specific aspects of intelligent behaviour; but none come close to possessing the broad range of intellectual abilities most humans possess. This is well illustrated by Deep Blue -- IBM's chess playing monstrosity. It has beaten Kasparov on a few occassions (just as Kasparov has beaten it). One of Kasparov's comments was that it doesn't play like a human opponent. Which is true, it uses a combination of brute force (considering every possible move) and relatively simplistic pattern matching to reduce the alternatives. I say relatively simplistic, because the average human world champion at Chess cannot come close to computing the number of moves Deep Blue does, yet is about as good at playing Chess. Moreover, they are able to make comments about their experience of the game.

What this tell us is that the barrier between human intelligence and articifial intelligence is not processing speed. The way the human mind processes information is not linear -- or not exclusively linear. Making faster computational processors will not necessarily deliver intelligence.

The core problem, as I've mentioned elsewhere, is consciousness. For genuine intelligence, there is a level of consciousness required. Unfortunately we don't know if this can be replicated artificially and, if it can, we have no idea where to begin with this. Processing speed may make this possible -- but the resulting intelligence will not be the same as human intelligence. It's also likely that such a breakthorugh would be unintentional.

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

FA
You were not educating anyone, you were stating your opinion...

[Fallen Angel]

So you did'nt learn anything?

[Pooeypants]

And to stop the flaming we can back to the subject ish. I was told once that the Brain was working equivalent to a 200Ghz processor. Not at the clock speed of but equivalent, probably to do with its simulatoneous processing rather than the linear of CPU at the mo.

[Geoff332]

The brain is working on an entirely different model from a linear processor (and we don't fully understand that model). At some tasks, it has an equivalent clock-speed in excess of 200 GHz at others it has an equivalient clock speed of about an hour. The linear model is wrong, and that is why faster clock-speed won't bring us any closer to AI.

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

I have to agree with Geoff for a change. In order for true intelligence to deveop an organism must be capable of on the spot trouble shooting.

[Fallen Angel]

What is ironic considering how much a computer can do at one time, and how incredibly fast it is, is that it was reported in a magazine I was flicking through once that to be the equal of a human brain, the size of the most modern computer would be as big as two city blocks, now I read that four years ago, and as much as technology has advanced, since even then, I don't think the size of this computer would have diminished that much, so we must have untold depths of mental capabilitys we are generally not aware of, like Einstein said, the average human uses less than 10% of his brain or her brain, so imagine if you will what we could be actually capable of doing then?

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

The less than 10% was proven as a logical fallicy. It was improperly assumed that since a brain damaged individual could function normally with only 10% of his brain that that meant 10% was all we used. Yes, a lot of the brain is redundant, so that it can suffer damage and live. But if a small child lost 90% of his brain he would never achieve the state of normal.

[fedfem]

But he could become President.

[Geoff332]

The main area I've looked at where there is a huge difference between computer and human processing is pattern recognition. The human brain has an incredible ability to see patterns from relatively discrete elements. This is central to language and image processing and huge parts of human problem solving. One example is how we either read or listen. We do not see each individual letter (or phonetic element) and work out what word they mean. We spot the whole pattern. A good typist does this process in reverse -- they don't think about each letter when typing a word, they have the entire word (or phrase) as a single element in their cognitive processed. With unfamiliar words, we revert to a more piecemeal approach.

There's all sorts of complicated implications of this. We skip huge amounts of detailed data and make rather large assumptions from the context -- which makes us susceptiable error. But it also makes the processing much faster (to read the word 'faster', for example, I process one thing instead of six letter or two phonetic elements).

One approach that offers some real potential is quantum computing. Here's an introduction that covers it far better than I can.

[Pooeypants]

Originally posted by Fallen Angel@Sep 7 2003, 05:05 AM What is ironic considering how much a computer can do at one time, and how incredibly fast it is, is that it was reported in a magazine I was flicking through once that to be the equal of a human brain, the size of the most modern computer would be as big as two city blocks, now I read that four years ago, and as much as technology has advanced, since even then, I don't think the size of this computer would have diminished that much, so we must have untold depths of mental capabilitys we are generally not aware of, like Einstein said, the average human uses less than 10% of his brain or her brain, so imagine if you will what we could be actually capable of doing then?

4 years ago...well the width of transistors decreases by half every 12 to 18 months so that computer can be reduced to less than one city block...but remember that the Brain is modelled in 3D, wheras the CPUs have 2D architecture.
So unless they start building computers in 3D they'll still be a long way off coming close to the Brain's processing power.

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

That makes absolutely no sense. The number was arrived at by counting nerve ganglia...

[Jim]

About the 10% thing: Is there any empirical research to show how much of our brains we actually do use?

[Geoff332]

Here's an article that summarises Searle's Chinese Room and the major responses to that thought experiment. The central problem with these arguments is the lack of criteria. Because we don't really understand the nature of consciousness, it's hard to say where imitation of conscious behaviour stops and genuine consciousness begins. Searle paints one end of the debate quite nicely: symbol processing without understanding is not consciousness, no matter what behaviour it produces (a point not everyone agrees with). But how far do we have to move from that point before we do have consciousness.

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

Jim
It is not that simple, we actually use all of our brain since it consists of redundant processes, and specialized ones, we just do not use all of it at once. Now, if you were problem solving an equation that demanded that you visualise it, included information that you could only know by traveling there, required you to analyze emotional content to manipulate symbols to determine anouther emotional reaction, using a lot of formula's that you had to memorize, while preforming complicated physical movements, and required you to do all of this simultaneously... You would be using a very large portain of your brain, but not 100%.