X-Message-Number: 26882 Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:32:02 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: RE: comments of Yvan "answering" mine Hello Yvan again: You comments about my postings totally miss the points I was making. First of all, the advantage of parallel processing is that it can act faster than a single processor. No one would deny this; it is why companies have spent millions to make highly parallel computers. Moreover, with enough processors, even if they are individually slow, we can (on some tasks) make a computer that will work much faster than any conceivable single processor. Yes, in terms of Turing processors, a highly parallel computer is identical to a single processor, not because Turing was ignorant of the real world but because he was interested solely in the computational possibilities of a computer. As living beings in a hostile world, the time we take to do things becomes very important. Any use of Turing's Theorem to design robots able to do even primitive lifelike actions will break down for just this reason. I will freely admit that the Net forms a large collection of connected processors with the number of processors changing constantly. However, just as with Turing's ideas, TIME IS VERY IMPORTANT. I was pointing out that brains do the same thing as the Net, but far faster. Your example of the Net fails badly in that feature of TIME. Any attempt to imitate a whole working brain must deal with the speed of processing of which it is or isn't capable. We can certainly produce very slow simulations of networks of neurons; and these would certainly be interesting as objects to study just how our brain's neurons work. However they would be useless as devices able to act like real brains in the real world, precisely because of the problem of TIMING. In short, your comments forget or (deliberately?) omit the problem of TIMING, which for any true imitation of a brain must match. Best wishes and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26882