25 ms·

This is exactly what I was thinking. Actually, if that last shift took 35 years, the next one of that magnitude will be even faster. This is Kurtzweil's funda

This is exactly what I was thinking. Actually, if that last shift took 35 years, the next one of that magnitude will be even faster. This is Kurtzweil's fundamental insight: exponential growth is faster than people realize. We consistently underestimate it because our brains are pre-disposed to think linearly. If it takes you 1 year to solve 1% of a problem, your brain feels like you're 99 years away. In reality, you're only 7 doublings from completion.

api 16y ago
Where that falls down is that it fails to consider limits. Exponential growth cannot continue forever. At some point, something will limit it. It may be a physical limit, a supply-side resource limit, or an economic demand limit, but there will be a limit somewhere. Without limits, a single bacterium could fill the entire universe in a few years. Sometimes things do grow like that for a while, but Kurzweil's attempt to turn this into a universal law and neglect limits is hand-wavey and silly.
- btilly 16y ago
  True. However decades long periods of exponential improvement in technology is the norm, not the exception. The most spectacular example is Moore's law, but it is hardly alone. If you read The Innovator's Dilemma you will find plenty of other examples, ranging from the maximum range of a steam ship to the volume of dirt a backhoe can scoop per hour. The interesting questions are how much computing power you need to perform equivalent tasks to a human brain, and whether current technology will reach that before it plateau's out.
  - joe_the_user 16y ago
    The idea of "things leveling out" evoke a metaphor of there being some finite amount of resources that can be gotten out of somewhere. Exponential growth of tools opens up an exponential number of different avenues of exploration - if computers didn't advance at all for ten years, we'd still come up with many more ways to use them. With them advancing exponentially, we can not only find different ways of using them but new fields where different forms of exponential growth can happen. And so-forth. There's no fixed frontier but a moving process. This isn't saying it's all wonderful but it's all likely to be a bit beyond our ability to encompass it - to draw a circle around it.
jacquesm 16y ago
You can solve a problem 1% in 1 year if it is a linear problem then you are right. But if the 1% was the easy bit and the 99% remaining are very hard then you still don't have a solution. If the solution is 99% easy and 1% hard then you may find out after completing 99% of the problem. Many problems are like that, simulating the brain is an excellent candidate for being such a problem. If it was just a matter of throwing more computer power at it then we'd have solved it years ago, it's that big a prize. But there is still a large part of our understanding missing and understanding does not yield to Moores law.

api 16y ago

Where that falls down is that it fails to consider limits. Exponential growth cannot continue forever. At some point, something will limit it. It may be a physical limit, a supply-side resource limit, or an economic demand limit, but there will be a limit somewhere. Without limits, a single bacterium could fill the entire universe in a few years. Sometimes things do grow like that for a while, but Kurzweil's attempt to turn this into a universal law and neglect limits is hand-wavey and silly.

btilly 16y ago
True. However decades long periods of exponential improvement in technology is the norm, not the exception. The most spectacular example is Moore's law, but it is hardly alone. If you read The Innovator's Dilemma you will find plenty of other examples, ranging from the maximum range of a steam ship to the volume of dirt a backhoe can scoop per hour. The interesting questions are how much computing power you need to perform equivalent tasks to a human brain, and whether current technology will reach that before it plateau's out.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  The idea of "things leveling out" evoke a metaphor of there being some finite amount of resources that can be gotten out of somewhere. Exponential growth of tools opens up an exponential number of different avenues of exploration - if computers didn't advance at all for ten years, we'd still come up with many more ways to use them. With them advancing exponentially, we can not only find different ways of using them but new fields where different forms of exponential growth can happen. And so-forth. There's no fixed frontier but a moving process. This isn't saying it's all wonderful but it's all likely to be a bit beyond our ability to encompass it - to draw a circle around it.

jacquesm 16y ago

You can solve a problem 1% in 1 year if it is a linear problem then you are right. But if the 1% was the easy bit and the 99% remaining are very hard then you still don't have a solution. If the solution is 99% easy and 1% hard then you may find out after completing 99% of the problem. Many problems are like that, simulating the brain is an excellent candidate for being such a problem. If it was just a matter of throwing more computer power at it then we'd have solved it years ago, it's that big a prize. But there is still a large part of our understanding missing and understanding does not yield to Moores law.