6 ms·
Yes, and also, who cares how long it takes to think? The article points out: > If our brains grew enormously to say, the size of our solar system, and feature
by millstone 11y ago
Yes, and also, who cares how long it takes to think?
The article points out:
> If our brains grew enormously to say, the size of our solar system, and featured speed-of-light signaling, the same number of message crossings would require more than the entire current age of the universe, leaving no time for evolution to work its course.
but this argues that stellar-scale life doesn't exist yet, not that it can't exist.
The universe is extremely young, ~10^10 years. Stars will continue to form for 10^14 years - ten thousand times longer than the universe has existed so far. And the universe will continue to evolve for many many orders of magnitude after that. There is plenty of time.
- vidarh 11y agoThat argument also assumes that such an intelligence must evolve. If you were to build it out of individual cells, that seems reasonable. But such an intelligence could also be an emergent property of civilizations of intelligent beings, for example. We know too little of what sentience involves to be able to rule out such hive minds.
- riprowan 11y agoThat's right. We humans are individualized at the organism level and tend to think entirely from the perspective of a single organism. However it seems clear to me that networked intelligence, of the sort that has only existed on Earth for a couple of decades, is actually a new form of intelligence than individual intelligence. Networked intelligence on Earth is extremely new and weak, however I am confident that in my lifetime we will recognize it as an "emergent intelligence".
- meric 11y agoI'd say our markets are a form of network intelligence.
- WalterBright 11y agoWith all the GPUs and cheap memory these days, I wonder why I am not reading about more attempts to evolve life in a computer than trying to design it.
- jodrellblank 11y agoIf you want to read about evolving life in a computer, have you tried Greg Egan's short story Crystal Nights - http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/ http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/ ? It's fiction, but it's good.
- WalterBright 11y agoGood story!
- Artistry121 11y agoJust read this. Thank you for the recommendation. It was good.
- Angostura 11y ago> However it seems clear to me that networked intelligence, of the sort that has only existed on Earth for a couple of decades Or 120 million years, if you think that ants fit the description.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoOr even billions of years, if you consider bacteria. They span enormous areas and reproduce so quickly that it does in effect act as a broad information network, just not in a way we would call sentient intelligence.
- brazzledazzle 11y agoI'm reminded of Greg Bear's novel Blood Music.
- wlievens 11y agoDamn that was a scary piece of writing.
- gumby 11y agoIn fact they can have collective signaling networks as well -- consider the specialization and signaling that goes on in the biofilms of slime molds. (some examples: https://www.biofilm.montana.edu/node/2438 https://www.biofilm.montana.edu/node/2438 & http://www.nature.com/articles/npjbiofilms20156 http://www.nature.com/articles/npjbiofilms20156 )
- riprowan 11y agoI was referring to " the sort that has only existed on Earth for a couple of decades." That's why I said that ;) Actually my mistake was here, where I wrote: > actually a new form of intelligence than individual intelligence. should have probably said "actually a new form of intelligence on top of human sentience." since I was referring specifically to the emergent intelligence of a sentient species able to encode our intelligence and transmit it throughout the network at near light-speed.
- caf 11y agoWe humans are individualized at the organism level... Are we, though? Isn't an individual human actually a large colony of co-operating cellular organisms?
- pklausler 11y ago... which are each just small bags of chemicals. But it's only at the level of a brain that the illusion of consciousness appears.
- madaxe_again 11y agoWe already have artificial intelligence, in the form of any sufficiently large organisation. Corporations are intelligences of a sort - they take in information and respond to it using defined rules, and by co-opting meat computers as needed.