X-Message-Number: 21140
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 07:03:37 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: addition to previous 10 Feb message

Hi everyone!

In my message for 10 February I criticised both Drexler and Kurzweil
(or at least what they are reported to have said) on the amount of 
memory our brains can store, saying basically that until we knew
how our brains stored memories such figures were speculation only.

I should have added a bit, to make my doubts a bit more clear: the
problem is very simple. We do NOT know whether or not our brains
compress memories also. I'm not claiming that they'd use the same
compression algorithm, but nothing keeps them from having their
own. This would increase the storage amount by an unknown factor.
As a simple matter of fact, it's known that different aspects of
the memory of a scene or event are stored in different brain 
areas: color here, geometry elsewhere, and so on. That doesn't
PROVE that our brains use compression, but it does make it look
more likely.

               Best wishes and long long life for all,

                  Thomas Donaldson

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