Mercurial > thoughts
comparison org/ideas.org @ 139:695c5f257d37
ideas about the furture.
| author | Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu> |
|---|---|
| date | Tue, 06 Jan 2015 22:55:33 -0800 |
| parents | 98ba603e251a |
| children | 208424fee6f9 |
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| 138:98ba603e251a | 139:695c5f257d37 |
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| 28 | 28 |
| 29 #+begin_quote | 29 #+begin_quote |
| 30 There's no end to what a man can accomplish if he doesn't care about | 30 There's no end to what a man can accomplish if he doesn't care about |
| 31 getting credit. | 31 getting credit. |
| 32 #+end_quote | 32 #+end_quote |
| 33 | |
| 34 - the great computing slow-down :: in general, our computers are | |
| 35 getting faster and faster. However, eventually our brains will be | |
| 36 made of the same stuff our computers are made of! This has very | |
| 37 interesting consequences -- I can add 2+2 and get four in about a | |
| 38 second. Since my neurons actually work at around 10-60 hertz in | |
| 39 parallel, this means that it takes me around 10-30 operations to | |
| 40 do this addition. That's actually not bad in terms of computing | |
| 41 time. If my neurons were as fast as the latest transitors, then | |
| 42 most calculators would be SLOWER than me at adding numbers. Only | |
| 43 the newest, most optimized calculators would be faster, and then | |
| 44 only about 10 times faster! This means that once we begin to | |
| 45 think at the speed of our technology, that technology will | |
| 46 suddenly seem pitifully slow in comparison to how it seems | |
| 47 now. And no amount of technical progress will remedy it, because | |
| 48 that same progress will also make us all think faster. We'll | |
| 49 either have to settle with living in "slow time" to do some | |
| 50 computations, or learn to make smarter hardware with special | |
| 51 optimizations. But this is actually really hard, because we'll be | |
| 52 working with machines that will appear to us about as fast as | |
| 53 MECHANICAL computers. So, in the future, all the cool parties | |
| 54 will be in cyperspace at vastly accelerated speeds compared to | |
| 55 how we exist now. But at these parties, the computers will SUCK! | |
| 56 Of course, this is one of the few things that can save us from AI | |
| 57 risk, because those AI's won't seem so scary when the're build | |
| 58 out of rickety mechanical parts form our perspective. | |
| 59 | |
| 60 - unitary reverse evolution of chaos+minds :: chaotic systems diverge | |
| 61 exponentially in state space. Do you get anything interesting | |
| 62 when part of the physical system associated with the chaotic | |
| 63 system is a object that performs some sort of computation? Is it | |
| 64 possible for the computational system to play a | |
| 65 percision-enabling role in determining the final/initial | |
| 66 conditions of the chaotic system, just by tracing out thoughts in | |
| 67 its decision paths? This is probably too vague of an idea right | |
| 68 now, I just wanted to write it down. | |
| 33 | 69 |
| 34 - microwave time :: the cooking time you enter on most microwaves is | 70 - microwave time :: the cooking time you enter on most microwaves is |
| 35 insane. It's expressed in what I call a "hybrid base", a | 71 insane. It's expressed in what I call a "hybrid base", a |
| 36 combination of base 10 and base 60. You can get absurd things | 72 combination of base 10 and base 60. You can get absurd things |
| 37 like 100 < 61, and 120 == 80! I wonder if these hybrid base | 73 like 100 < 61, and 120 == 80! I wonder if these hybrid base |