Re: Sarah Palin - hot or not?

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:38:58 -0700 (PDT), MooseFET
<kensmith@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sep 17, 8:55 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:16:14 +0100, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax



<dirk.bru...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:18:07 -0700 (PDT), Martin Brown
<|||newspam...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sep 16, 3:04 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:49:01 -0700 (PDT), Martin Brown

<|||newspam...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 15, 3:12 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Behe suggests - and I conjectured this too - that the original life in
the universe may have evolved in a Darwinian manner, by incremental
steps, without irreducable complexity. Some sort of quantum computing
The scaffolds and redundant systems that sort of worked to bootstrap
life are mostly long gone or possibly still lurking partially in the
"junk" genetic codes. It is not and never was a linear process. I'd be
looking at the extremophiles and archaea for clues - and I understand
that several research programmes are doing just that (including
commercial interests looking for high temperature stable enzymes). eg
http://artedi.ebc.uu.se/molev/resarch/archaea.html
All the self organising reactions known to date require a self
catalytic agent (like an enzyme). The simplest known is the B-Z
reaction which is demonstrable in a petri dish on a school OHP. The
ceric-cerous periodic redox clock reaction. Cute online demo of it - a
Wolfram style CA running in real chemical form at:
http://nylander.wordpress.com/2007/05/10/belousov-zhabotinsky-bz-reac...
inside a gas giant maybe? Some Conway game of life thing? That's
believable, with no showstoppers. That life may have designed us.
It may be enough that the values of our constants of nature create the
universe that we see with all its complexity. In a sense a handful of
numbers determines what the universe looks like. I suggest you read
Prof Sir Martin Rees book "Just 6 Numbers".
Fuzzy hand-waving about mechanisms can't dismiss three great
mysteries:
  What was the origin of the universe?
  What was the origin of life?
  What is the nature of consciousness?
I am not trying to dismiss them. Modern cosmology is pretty close to a
good answer to the first one and here's a hint: it doesn't involve a
monotheistic deity working a seven day week.
We stand a fair chance with both of the other two as well. Chemists
are getting pretty good at making self assembling polymer
microstructures and lipid membranes I expect we will see progress as
spin off from that.
And I hope to see the first artificially sentient computer if Moores
law can be made to hold up for long enough to get a digital super
computer with sufficient capacity to simulate a human brain.

That would be around 2012 when supercomputers hit 10 PFLOPS
But if you're pessimistic then you'll have to wait another 5-10 years
for the exascale computers being planned now.

The Blue Brain project aims to do a complete Human brain simulation
eventually.
http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page18924.html

At current rates of progress this would be around 2020

How can a deterministic machine simulate a human brain? Pretty much by
definition, if a computer and a program don't produce exactly
repeatable outputs for identical inputs, they're broken.

If the computer is connected to microphone and a video input it is
getting plenty of random noise. This would mean that the output of
the computer can vary in a random manner and still be working.

Since we only have experience with human brains that receive random
inputs from eyes etc, we don't know what a human brain would do
without any random inputs.

Quantum computers, still in a primitive state, are non-deterministic
and non-procedural. I suspect that neurons are quantum computers at
their core... they've got the necessary chemical resources, and
biology tends to use any phenomenon that works. Intel-type chips are
designed specifically to avoid quantum effects, so are always dumb
state machines.

John



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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Sarah Palin - hot or not?
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  • Re: Sarah Palin - hot or not?
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