yes yes
I have to take responsibility for a slight mistake I didn't point out earlier.
in a reply to my post, cerumfary said:
You are Mad, my strange little friend. But it's the kind of Madness that leads to deeper Worth, so this is good.
Computers really /aren't/ more complex than us. To wit, there are still a handful of people in the world capable of understanding what every single circuit and transistor on the motherboard does--capable of writing in machine code. There is no one and has never been anyone capable of understanding what each circuit in our brains do. We may never know.
However, the spirit of your rant is still perfectly germaine and valuable, so rock on.
Have you read any:
Timothy Leary
Robert S. Wilson
Aleister Crowley
???
Most especially you oughta pick up Ol' Bob's "Cosmic Trigger". You are approaching a "Chapel Perilous" and you need -- well, not a map, but a guide book.
ed, blahblahbloo, replied with (and I asked him to bring this point up because it was a good one):
I doubt that there's anyone in the world who understands all of a modern computer system in any detail.
Take, for instance, the system I'm typing this on. It's a MacBook Pro.
The processor is an Intel Core Duo. Like other processors that would come in computers you can buy these days, this is an immensely complicated superscalar, pipelined CPU. Modern Intel x86 processors are particularly complicated. They translate x86 code into an internal microop architecture, which they are then capable of executing out-of-order when doing so does not change semantics, and so forth. Not to mention crazy speed-enhancing features like dynamic branch prediction. Just understanding how this one piece of the system works in some detail might take you a decade.
In addition to the Intel Core Duo, there is also specialized graphics hardware. Simpler than the CPU, but still pretty freaking complicated.
Anyone who understands that part of the system would then need to look at the software side. Mac OS X is loosely based on the Mach microkernel architecture, where the kernel is separated into separate pieces which talk to one another. The number of lines of code we're talking about here, for the whole system, almost certainly runs into the millions.
So yeah, no one understands a modern computer system in any detail. They understand each component conceptually, perhaps, and they might know how to work with all the components, but no one could build a system from scratch. That would take several lifetimes.
what I failed to notice because of my state of awe in the accuracy of both these arguments, was that that awe actually was due to the fact that you are both very very correct. and that is possible because there are several fathomable solutions.
I will state the most simple one I can.
the human brain(s) (think intenstines, immune system, reproductive...these sort of abstract brains) do have every bit of potential to be more complex than the computer.
this is obvious.
but what else is obvious is that I, and pretty much anyone associated with computers, also knows that it would take "several lifetimes" to know everything in the computer.
well, it would take ONE lifetime if that person were born to know everything in the computer. his brain is complex enough to hold all that information. the reason that you, Ed, used the term "several lifetimes" is because we are well aware that a person's life must extend beyond the knowledge of a computer. which is why it takes several people to dedicate sections of their knowledge so that we keep the computer within our control and grasp and understanding.
my point, which I see now after I wrote it rather fallaciously, is that the intellectuals are split the way you two are. and that is, half of you/us believe that the computer will never outdo the brain, and the other half believe that the computer has already shown to be of such a useful resource that it replaces/relaxes a lot of now-unnecessary brain activity (such as statistical analysis or the counting of the digits that fit into pi).
why does pi have infinite digits? and why do we keep trying to apprehend that?
this is because we are looking at pi in terms of NUMBERS. now, we INVENTED numbers to count fathomable objects. pi is not fathomable via numerical analysis.
every number theorist knows that numbers have loop holes, and that using coding and crypology, smart human beings can hide giant amounts of information in those loop holes.
that is because the number system is simply a symbolic mapping of that part of our brain. in other words, the number system IS the structure of that part of our brain. there is no other way to draw or map that structure in this time and age. it is too complex. that is why we invented numbers...to simplify that structure.
likewise, we invented computers to do that simplification for us, and then designed computers to be so complex that they in fact extend the simplification concept outwards until no longer numbers become that simplest form of human rationality. vectors, for example, simplify physics because in the four dimensional physical realm, no scalar exists autonomously without having some sort of direction, even if that direction is null and the scalar is null. that is just the way the physical world is understood by us.
now that smallest form of number is hidden in computers and the programming language that truly is computer's DNA. we need to accept that there are more living things in existence. and we know that well enough. and we can only derive this form via the use of computers.
it is autonomy. it is like hiding information into a spy and being forced to kill the spy because there is no way to crack the human mind into believing that it must release information that that human mind is so dependent upon for survival.
so, in a sense, if a spy does tell the truth, he's dead. if he doesn't, he has a limited amount of time to live before he will die. and the moment he is dying is the moment he finally sacrificed his knowledge for his inherent belief that his sort of humanity (nation) is more important than his life.
kamikaze's were the military's most testosterone-driven white blood cells in the metaphorical (most true) sense. from this, we see that japan's failure to win the war was its masculinity. even against the warning of genocide, japan was stubborn. only until we crippled the nation of japan until it no longer had its drive to survive as a nation did it give up.
now, japan, treated as a single organism, sounds like nearly every human being that weilds a penis that I have ever met. even myself. and no matter sexual preference, that penis will always always always be more autonomous than the brain, until the brain rationalizes to work out the dissonance and work WITH the penis.
funny, huh?
but true.
in a reply to my post, cerumfary said:
You are Mad, my strange little friend. But it's the kind of Madness that leads to deeper Worth, so this is good.
Computers really /aren't/ more complex than us. To wit, there are still a handful of people in the world capable of understanding what every single circuit and transistor on the motherboard does--capable of writing in machine code. There is no one and has never been anyone capable of understanding what each circuit in our brains do. We may never know.
However, the spirit of your rant is still perfectly germaine and valuable, so rock on.
Have you read any:
Timothy Leary
Robert S. Wilson
Aleister Crowley
???
Most especially you oughta pick up Ol' Bob's "Cosmic Trigger". You are approaching a "Chapel Perilous" and you need -- well, not a map, but a guide book.
ed, blahblahbloo, replied with (and I asked him to bring this point up because it was a good one):
I doubt that there's anyone in the world who understands all of a modern computer system in any detail.
Take, for instance, the system I'm typing this on. It's a MacBook Pro.
The processor is an Intel Core Duo. Like other processors that would come in computers you can buy these days, this is an immensely complicated superscalar, pipelined CPU. Modern Intel x86 processors are particularly complicated. They translate x86 code into an internal microop architecture, which they are then capable of executing out-of-order when doing so does not change semantics, and so forth. Not to mention crazy speed-enhancing features like dynamic branch prediction. Just understanding how this one piece of the system works in some detail might take you a decade.
In addition to the Intel Core Duo, there is also specialized graphics hardware. Simpler than the CPU, but still pretty freaking complicated.
Anyone who understands that part of the system would then need to look at the software side. Mac OS X is loosely based on the Mach microkernel architecture, where the kernel is separated into separate pieces which talk to one another. The number of lines of code we're talking about here, for the whole system, almost certainly runs into the millions.
So yeah, no one understands a modern computer system in any detail. They understand each component conceptually, perhaps, and they might know how to work with all the components, but no one could build a system from scratch. That would take several lifetimes.
what I failed to notice because of my state of awe in the accuracy of both these arguments, was that that awe actually was due to the fact that you are both very very correct. and that is possible because there are several fathomable solutions.
I will state the most simple one I can.
the human brain(s) (think intenstines, immune system, reproductive...these sort of abstract brains) do have every bit of potential to be more complex than the computer.
this is obvious.
but what else is obvious is that I, and pretty much anyone associated with computers, also knows that it would take "several lifetimes" to know everything in the computer.
well, it would take ONE lifetime if that person were born to know everything in the computer. his brain is complex enough to hold all that information. the reason that you, Ed, used the term "several lifetimes" is because we are well aware that a person's life must extend beyond the knowledge of a computer. which is why it takes several people to dedicate sections of their knowledge so that we keep the computer within our control and grasp and understanding.
my point, which I see now after I wrote it rather fallaciously, is that the intellectuals are split the way you two are. and that is, half of you/us believe that the computer will never outdo the brain, and the other half believe that the computer has already shown to be of such a useful resource that it replaces/relaxes a lot of now-unnecessary brain activity (such as statistical analysis or the counting of the digits that fit into pi).
why does pi have infinite digits? and why do we keep trying to apprehend that?
this is because we are looking at pi in terms of NUMBERS. now, we INVENTED numbers to count fathomable objects. pi is not fathomable via numerical analysis.
every number theorist knows that numbers have loop holes, and that using coding and crypology, smart human beings can hide giant amounts of information in those loop holes.
that is because the number system is simply a symbolic mapping of that part of our brain. in other words, the number system IS the structure of that part of our brain. there is no other way to draw or map that structure in this time and age. it is too complex. that is why we invented numbers...to simplify that structure.
likewise, we invented computers to do that simplification for us, and then designed computers to be so complex that they in fact extend the simplification concept outwards until no longer numbers become that simplest form of human rationality. vectors, for example, simplify physics because in the four dimensional physical realm, no scalar exists autonomously without having some sort of direction, even if that direction is null and the scalar is null. that is just the way the physical world is understood by us.
now that smallest form of number is hidden in computers and the programming language that truly is computer's DNA. we need to accept that there are more living things in existence. and we know that well enough. and we can only derive this form via the use of computers.
it is autonomy. it is like hiding information into a spy and being forced to kill the spy because there is no way to crack the human mind into believing that it must release information that that human mind is so dependent upon for survival.
so, in a sense, if a spy does tell the truth, he's dead. if he doesn't, he has a limited amount of time to live before he will die. and the moment he is dying is the moment he finally sacrificed his knowledge for his inherent belief that his sort of humanity (nation) is more important than his life.
kamikaze's were the military's most testosterone-driven white blood cells in the metaphorical (most true) sense. from this, we see that japan's failure to win the war was its masculinity. even against the warning of genocide, japan was stubborn. only until we crippled the nation of japan until it no longer had its drive to survive as a nation did it give up.
now, japan, treated as a single organism, sounds like nearly every human being that weilds a penis that I have ever met. even myself. and no matter sexual preference, that penis will always always always be more autonomous than the brain, until the brain rationalizes to work out the dissonance and work WITH the penis.
funny, huh?
but true.