| Alistair 2007-04-18, 6:55 pm |
| On 17 Apr, 02:23, "Charles Hottel" <chot...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> My responses are interspered below.
>
> example a guy had a pond with fish and he wished to prevent the water plants
> from covering the pond and killing his fish. The plants grew so as to
> double the area they covered in two to three days. He watch the growth of
> the plants for several w s and the progress seemed not so bad so he went
> on a two w vactaion. When he came back the pond was covered with plants
> and the fish were dead. The last seven doublings increased the area coverd
> by a factor of 128. Most of the progress occurs after the knee of the curve.
As a former marine biologist I should point out that the analogy used
is w as the plant growth rate will depend upon such factors as
temperature, nutrient levels, light levels (aquatic plants, from
microbes upwards, do best in spring and autumn when light and nutrient
levels are optimal and when temperatures are not a limiting factor).
>
>
> I believe Penrose and someone else whose name escapes me at the moment
> speculate that tubules (not certain if that is the correct spelling) in the
> nerons may perform quatum computation. Kurzweil says that there is as yet no
> proof of that and even if such computation goes on in the brain there is
> nothing that prevents a machine from functioning as a quantum computer and
> duplicating it. I thought his explaination of quantum computers, how they
> work and what their limitations were the clearest and easiest to understand
> that I have read to date. Having to figure out and duplicate these quantum
> processes will delay the time table, but we already see computers increasing
> their intellegence rapidly without quantum computing. We can probably have
> very intelligent computers without it although it would be required for
> uploading minds. In 1990 compter were scoffed at by champion human chess
> players but compter kept getting smarter while the humans remained about the
> same. By 1995 (I think that is the year) the computes caught up and passed
> the humans.
>
>
>
> He says we evolved from bacteria and we did not exterminate them so super
> intelligent computers will not wipe us out.
Their is no possible comparison here. Bacteria are non-sentient
whereas humans are and computers may well become so. How about the
fact that humans have evolved from apes and have been busy wiping them
out over the past 7 million years?
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