X-Message-Number: 25980 Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 10:57:40 -0700 From: Pat Clancy <> Subject: reply to Thomas Donaldson Re: reply to Yvan Bozzonetti References: <> > As for the scanty comments you made in your message, I will point out > that parallel computers can do things impossible for any single > computer. Actually this is not correct, though it is a common misperception. Any single processor computer can do anything that any multi-processor can do - it may just take longer. A textbook on computer theory will confirm this. Think in terms of algorithms: all computers execute algorithms (and that's all they can do), and any algorithm, whether or not it is specified using parallel threads of control, can be executed by any computer (given sufficient memory), no matter how many processors it has or how they're connected. However this is not an argument for the possibility of implementing brains using computers (which in my view is and forever will be impossible). Just the opposite: if you believe that the mind is not an algorithm, then the fact that all computer architectures are fundamentally equivalent means that no computer architecture, no matter how massively parallel, can implement a mind. Which is not to say that there isn't some type of artificial substrate that _could_ implement a mind; it just has to be something that functions in a way equivalent to a brain, and not a computer. Pat Clancy Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25980