Re: OT: Is New Orleans finished ?

John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Dirk Bruere at Neopax <dirk.bruere@xxxxxxxxx> wrote (in <3nmnmjF22ortU2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>) about 'OT: Is New Orleans finished ?', on Wed, 31 Aug 2005:

Well, I'll spoil it for the guy.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=1%23610


As long as you explain that some of the stuff there is not new, and some is pure conjecture.

For example, exponential growth as a natural phenomenon has been know since antiquity. Just think of this equation, well known to Stone Age man, probably:

1 mouse + 1 mouse = 1 + exp(at) mice.

Of course, there are countervailing influences - cats and a limited food supply. But population explosions of mice do occur occasionally.

Then there is the very vexed question of the evolution of 'intelligence' (whatever that really is). We simply don't understand why we are so much more 'intelligent' than chimps and bonobos, and it is indeed not even possible to rule out a step change, and even a step change instigated by some external influence (not necessarily supernatural).

There is no evidence that human 'intelligence' is increasing through evolution; such an effect, if very small, would be difficult to detect anyway. To postulate a dramatic increase in human intelligence in the next 100 years is an extrapolation from VERY scanty data. And we don't know whether we can ever produce machine intelligence that is greater than our own; at present machine intelligence isn't even at the evolutionary level of military intelligence. (;-)

Well, in terms of raw processing power the recent announcement that the Japanese are aiming for a 10PFLOP machine by 2011 means that at least one computer will have Human level computing power.

Then we have design by genetic algorithm which, with such levels of computing power will undoubtedly churn out some very interesting stuff.

As for IQ, look up the Flynn Effect.
However, the biggest nearterm changes IMO (ie within 20yrs) are going to be genetic engineering based. The drastic slowing or elimination of the ageing process will probably have the biggest overt impact, but I expect that by them the re-engineering of Humanity will have taken off on a big scale. If not in the US or Europe then certainly China and the Far East. Expect a 'Superman' race...

As for what it might mean in practice, take a look at the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations. And this is only over ten or twenty points - not a hundred.

Just now the chimp genome has been decoded so we should start narrowing the search as to what makes us smarter almost immediately. That appears to be of prime interest. Expect applications.

--
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millenium
http://www.theconsensus.org
.