Posted by
Steve Smith on
Jul 20, 2008; 8:48pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/REPOST-The-meaning-of-inner-tp573374p574384.html
FYI... a few of my publications that are in the general vicinity of
this topic.
Smith S, Watt RC, Hameroff SR. Cellular automata in cytoskeletal
lattice proteins.
Physica D, 1984; 10:l68-l74.
Johnson, N. L., Rasmussen, S., Joslyn, C.,
Rocha, L., Smith, S., & Kantor, M. (1998). "
Symbiotic Intelligence:
Self-Organizing Knowledge on Distributed Networks Driven by Human
Interactions." In C. Adami, et al. (Eds.),
Artificial Life
VI. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
<http://ishi.lanl.gov/Documents/ALife6_LANL.pdf>
Kenneth L. Summers, Thomas P. Caudell, Kathryn Berkbigler, Brian Bush,
Kei Davis, Steve Smith.
Graph Visualization for the Analysis of the Structure and Dynamics
of Extreme-Scale Supercomputers. In
Journal of Information
Visualization, 2004.
I do not, by the way, endorse Hameroff/Penrose's Quantum Consciousness
schtick. I find it entertaining but their assertions seem to be based
as much on disproving complexity-origins as it is on proving
quantum-origins of consciousness.
- Steve
Prediction:
BigIron (silicon) games will play on for some time yet. BigWet
(neural tissue) will continue to rule.
As a long-time player in the various games of UberDuber computing at
LANL, starting (spiritually) with Metropolis' MANIAC and currently
playing there with RoadRunner, I continue to be under-impressed with
the game.
After 30 years of shooting the curl of Moore's Law and parallel
architectures: (2^(30/1.5) = 2^20 =~10^6 increase in processor speed
and ~10^5 increase in processor count or 10^11 - benchmarked at 10^15
flops vs 10^5 ops for MANIAC) , I am generally unimpressed by what has
changed qualitatively. Perhaps we are on the verge of a serious
breakthrough based on raw flops, but I doubt it.
I'm one degree of separation from Gar Kenyon (et al.'s) work on
Roadrunner to model neural systems starting with the visual cortex
(PetaVision). I think they are likely to get some very interesting
results, but not qualitatively closer to human cognition. I don't
expect it anyway, until we change our paradigms for modeling neural
processes. (e.g., I am very impressed with Tom Caudell's approach to
top-down meets bottom-up neural systems (catagory theory from the top,
neural nets from the bottom)).
Those 5 Billion Neurons are part of a self-modifying network of
analogish state machines embedded in a biochemical network we don't
even take into account (for the most part) when we measure and model
said BigWet. The 5 Trillionish transistors would seem to
trump the 5 Billionish Neurons 1000 times over... but clearly they
don't. If Roadrunner is anything like the last dozen
superduperclusters built, it will (also) never run as a single unit
except for benchmarking purposes... it will be a fractured set of tiny
fractions of itself most of the time.
These neural systems (of which the brain is merely/surely the biggest
lump) of ours were "designed" over eons by a highly parallel process of
mutation and natural selection and the software was designed by a
similar process in the context of our social systems over centuries or
millenia and tuned over decades of learning in any given individual.
I don't mean to be a naysayer... these massively parallel,
mega-giga-hyper-fast systems are *very* intertaining in many ways, I'm
just a bit further from looking into the room where the RoadRunner is
installed and waiting for it to say "What are you doing Dave (Steve)?"
as I reach for the 6inch diameter bundles feeding it power and
connections to the outside world.
Forgive me ( but correct me anyway ) on any errors of fact I may have
introduced by dashing this off between breakfast and beer. And then
have a heyday with the concepts if you will.
- Steve
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org