On Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 11:36 AM, John Mikes <[email protected]> wrote: > Craig, > you know more about the 'IBM-Synapse' achievement than myself (easy: I know > nothing, did not even thopughtfully decipher the article in all its > details). > I would ask IBM (they may not reply of course) if their machine (chip?) can > solve ANY technical problem barred by unsurmountable difficulties to a - not > only reasonable - but to a BETTER result than expected? > An examp[le from my past (and this is not boasting, it is an example how > human creativity could win over the "power of poverty". > In Commi Hungary the pharmceutical researchers wnted ion exchange resins for > a process to extract streptomycin from its broth. They did not have the > foreign currency to buy it, so they came to me (project Ion Exchange in the > polymer Research Inst.) to make such for them. I needed the cross-linking > agent (di-vinyl-benzene) to make the polymer and, of course I did not get > the foreign currency for it either. So I went to the Organic Chem. pilot > plant for styrene (Mono-vinyl-benzene) if they have some side-product I > could use. They had a distillation residue, a dark goo and stated that it > contains 15-25% of the stuff. Iff... > I had no facilities to extract it, so I decided the peasant-way: put the > entire goo into my mixture tp be polymerized and hoped that after cleaning > out all dirt from the resulting (cross-linked) polymer it will show > usability. After lots of cleaning I got seemingly OK bead-polymeers, which > after further treatment went into strepto-testing. That's when the Heureka > broke out: my dirty product bound several times more of the antibiotic than > the World Market products. The rest was routine: reproductions, changing > parameters and applying for the patents. Does the machine-brain go after > such series of hurdles and evaluate what can be done? Does it stay within > the limits and reduce the events to their applicability? > This was one example without rules and systems, no calculations, only > circumventing the obstacles untold.
Why do you imply that a machine based on chemistry, i.e. the brain, would be more creative than a machine made out of transistors or gears and pulleys? As a chemist, have you seen any special magic in chemical reactions that might explain the brain's ability to think? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
