On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 2:06 AM, Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 07:39:44PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> Hi Roger, >> >> On 18 Mar 2013, at 12:48, Roger Clough wrote: >> >> > >> >Since mind is an MQS or Multiple Quantum Superposition, it can >> >process information at the rate of a quantum computer. >> >> >> Since you seem to talk philosophy, let me translate what you say >> for our friends the scientists. >> >> If we assume that mind is a Multiple Quantum Superposition, and if >> we assume that mind can exploit those quantum superpositions to >> process information, then the mind can process information at the >> rate of a quantum computer. >> >> That implication seems to me quite reasonable. >> >> Test of the theory according to which a human mind is a Multiple >> Quantum Superposition: >> >> >> 1) show me a human as good as a quantum computer for finding a >> needle in a haystack. >> >> 2) Factorize 11111311111911111111511111111111121212111111111 >> >> > > Demonstrating these sorts of exponential speedups only falsifies the > proposition that a human mind is an ordinary classical computer (but > not COMP). It does not confirm in any way that a human mind operates > as a quantum computer, since random oracles are another way of > bridging computational complexity classes. > > We only need one idiot-savant to demonstrate this. > > By contrast, being unable to demonstrate this scaling means - well nothing > at all, actually.
I agree with Russell here. More generally, I always disliked these evaluations of the computational power of the human brain by the speed at which it can do arithmetics. It's quite possible that the brain is a computational beast, but the "software" it runs is specialised in other things: image pattern recognition, parsing semantic trees and so on. Arithmetics is a recent and unnatural activity for the brain, so it might very well have to be performed on top of inadequate and expensive pre-existing machinery. > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Principal, High Performance Coders > Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] > University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
