On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 04:25:19AM -0600, The Fool wrote: > > From: Erik Reuter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 12:17:35AM -0600, The Fool wrote: > > > I doubt their calcutions for human brain processing power are > correct. > > > > Their calculations are in the right ballpark; definitely they aren't > > clearly incorrect. Here's a message Bob Chassell posted in 1999 that > > gives a good background: > > A human mind isn't strictly sequential, like these kinds of computers > are. Even using thousands of processors, they are really only solving > sequential problems. A human mind is massively parallel processing. > > "10^11 neurons. Each neuron has about 5*10^3 synapses" > > Which comes out to about (5*10^14)! pathways. (this is an astronomical > number, much larger than the projected # of subatomic particles in the > universe).
There is your mistake. It comes out to 1E11 * 5E3 = 5E14 pathways (or possibly half that, I forget whether they count neurons at both ends of the synapse or just one end) The article said: >will be able to complete 100 thousand billion calculations per second >\227 a speed known as 100 teraflops that some scientists say is >comparable to That is 1E14. It is in the right ballpark. > Imagine for a second an internet where each node transmitted at the > same speed, and each node was connected to not 1 other node, but 5 to > 10 thousand nodes (like five to ten thousand individual fibre optic > cables per node. No need to imagine. Just calculate correctly. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
