5 ms·

> would think very slowly Very slowly for us humans, at our scale. But "it" would think at its own, regular pace (which might, in turn, be very fast for an ev

by Juliate 11y ago

> would think very slowly Very slowly for us humans, at our scale. But "it" would think at its own, regular pace (which might, in turn, be very fast for an even larger entity). In regard, we humans may not even be a perceptible event on this time scale. It's a matter of metabolism and of perception of time: we, as humans, think & react very slowly for smaller animals (and are even slower on the time scale of basic chemical reactions).

Gravityloss 11y ago
Well, the speed of thinking and control must be roughly related to the speed of actions. If you look at the giraffe, it's probably near the upper limit for an animal that still can run. Not about the muscles, but the brain couldn't be much further from the hooves or it would trip a lot, because the signals take so long to travel and there are limits to local "automation". Larger animals can exist, but they can't run, they must walk or swim slowly. Or the neural pathways would need to evolve into something faster. If you look at human society, once we industrialized and developed things like strip mining, synthetic fertilizers, plastic bags, chlorofluorocarbons, trawling or nuclear technology, it's clear that our capability of doing things multiplied. Sometimes the thinking and values part to actually control what we're doing comes a little bit belatedly.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  > * Larger animals can exist, but they can't run, they must walk or swim slowly. Or the neural pathways would need to evolve into something faster.* Or the head-brain could farm out the running to a different control point - a second brain that controls running. It seems like we may have already done this, ourselves: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/
  - Gravityloss 11y ago
    But some part of running requires vision since you must see obstacles and plan your footings. More the bigger and more fragile you are. So there would need to be another set of eyes and some basic processing then as well. And then, what about 3d perception, moving obstacles, predator recognition? You have to know what's just tall grass and what's a rock. You'd be better off moving the brain down and just having a really long mouth / snout / tongue. And then you'd have an elephant... You can only have very basic processing near the actual actuator.
    - happysadpanda 11y ago
      But why couldn't you have specialized processing... "brains"... near the sensors, and then have these send a simple binary signal back to some central "ok this is what we'll do"-brain?

by Juliate 11y ago

Gravityloss 11y ago

Well, the speed of thinking and control must be roughly related to the speed of actions. If you look at the giraffe, it's probably near the upper limit for an animal that still can run. Not about the muscles, but the brain couldn't be much further from the hooves or it would trip a lot, because the signals take so long to travel and there are limits to local "automation". Larger animals can exist, but they can't run, they must walk or swim slowly. Or the neural pathways would need to evolve into something faster. If you look at human society, once we industrialized and developed things like strip mining, synthetic fertilizers, plastic bags, chlorofluorocarbons, trawling or nuclear technology, it's clear that our capability of doing things multiplied. Sometimes the thinking and values part to actually control what we're doing comes a little bit belatedly.

pavel_lishin 11y ago
> * Larger animals can exist, but they can't run, they must walk or swim slowly. Or the neural pathways would need to evolve into something faster.* Or the head-brain could farm out the running to a different control point - a second brain that controls running. It seems like we may have already done this, ourselves: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/
- Gravityloss 11y ago
  But some part of running requires vision since you must see obstacles and plan your footings. More the bigger and more fragile you are. So there would need to be another set of eyes and some basic processing then as well. And then, what about 3d perception, moving obstacles, predator recognition? You have to know what's just tall grass and what's a rock. You'd be better off moving the brain down and just having a really long mouth / snout / tongue. And then you'd have an elephant... You can only have very basic processing near the actual actuator.
  - happysadpanda 11y ago
    But why couldn't you have specialized processing... "brains"... near the sensors, and then have these send a simple binary signal back to some central "ok this is what we'll do"-brain?