Message-Id: <199910061424.KAA09761@smtp10.atl.mindspring.net>
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 10:33:07 -0400
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: bbenzon@mindspring.com (Bill Benzon)
Subject: Re: implied or inferred memes
At 10:01 AM 10/6/99 -0400, Wade T.Smith wrote:
>>Limitations in computing power will be overcome.
>
>I know this ain't the forum, and I know it sounds really shortsighted,
>like IBM's guy claiming personal computing was an impossibility, but,
>even with present imagined architectures, I can only hope I live long
>enough to see the above prediction come true. IMHO, computing power will
>not overcome the limitations necessary to _really_ model human
>consciousness, but, I also do want to be mistaken about this.
I think consciousness is a different matter & I don't really know what I
think about it. But we're surely going to have some very powerful
computers that are going to allow us to do some interesting things.
Now, just how powerful is the human brain? I don't know, but, we've got, say,
10^11 neurons connected by 5^14 synapses. We've got to worry about the
concentration of around 100 chemicals in each of those synapses at, say,
millisecond intervals. Just how many states can such a system have?
William L. Benzon 201.217.1010
708 Jersey Ave. Apt. 2A bbenzon@mindspring.com
Jersey City, NJ 07302 USA http://www.newsavanna.com/wlb/
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