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> I disagree that all the computer processors in the world combined don't have enough raw processing power to simulate a single bee brain. That to me is an absu

by nawgz 11mo ago

> I disagree that all the computer processors in the world combined don't have enough raw processing power to simulate a single bee brain. That to me is an absurd idea. A bee weighs 100mg. If they are 5% brain, their brain weighs 5mg. 5mg of carbon is 2.5 * 10^20 atoms. The largest supercomputers, at hundreds of trillions of transistors, come in at 2-5 * 10^14 transistors. I don't think that combining all the computers in the world would give us 1 transistor per atom in a bee brain, and I additionally have to imagine transistors are incapable of simulating an atom by multiple orders of magnitude (i.e. 1 atom would require > 1 * 1 ^ 4 transistors) in realtime. So, I would argue that our level of compute is still insufficient to simulate even a simple insect brain in realtime. Perhaps you could compute 1 second of bee thinking in an hour using all our compute. And then, of course, comes into play that we have no idea how to simulate an atom in full fidelity.

Nevermark 11mo ago
> A bee weighs 100mg. If they are 5% brain, their brain weighs 5mg. 5mg of carbon is 2.5 * 10^20 atoms. Any rational characterization of the problem has left the building here. Nobody wants to simulate any creature's brain or nervous system atom for atom. Most of what atoms do in any cell, including neurological cells, is operate a vast number of complex but common survival systems. And the very small fraction supporting specifically neurological behavior, do not meaningfully contribute at the level where specifics of individual atoms matter, but at a level many orders of magnitude higher in scale.
- nawgz 11mo ago
  We’re talking about whether or not humanity has enough compute to simulate a bee brain, how can us having orders of magnitude less transistors than there are atoms in the system we wish to simulate possibly be hand waved away? A single transistor doesn’t do much, regardless of how much you wish to baldly assert atoms are supposedly trivial.
  - Nevermark 11mo ago
    Perhaps you are meaning to compare transistors with neurons? If we do that, then yes, a transistor is a lot simpler than a neuron. But transistors are also insanely fast compared to neurons, so transistors do far FAR more, per unit of time. A bee brain might have a million neurons, operating at maximum speed of about 250 Hz. 10^6 neurons x 250 Hz = 2.5 x 10^8 Hz for a bee brain. We can easily model that many neurons with a trillion transistors, operating at 100 Ghz. (If that sounds fast to you, keep in mind that CPU clock speeds account for many transistors switching in series.) 10^12 transistors x 10^11 Hz = 10^23 Hz for a CPU That is a factor of 4 x 10^14 more powerful. So yeah, the only problem for modeling a bee brain is identifying the organization of its neurons. Nature does a lot with a little. Trillions of bee life years went into designing a really efficient bee brain. --- Atoms: A bee brain might have 10^20 atoms. Atoms interact at speeds that are far beyond anything we are talking about here. But they don't "switch", they bounce around every which way and slowly end up reacting when they connect with the right conditions. This is called Brownian motion and its not computation, its natures way of using the chaos produced by heat to give compounds so many chances to find their right context that they eventually do. While we could not easily model that many atoms, nobody wants to (with regard to bees). Atoms are neither the "transistors" or the neurons of a bee brain.
    - nawgz 11mo ago
      Oh yeah, you're right, we have 4 * 10^14 more compute than an insectoid brain in real time. Come the fuck off it. This is the same guy who said rational characterizations had left right before waving away the complexity of a trillion atoms. Painful to imagine how smarmy you are.
      - Nevermark 11mo ago
        Well you have left your written record of (1) persistently confusing atoms with neurons, (2) an inability to explain where your confusion comes from outside of just repeating it, along side (3) snide responses to someone who in good faith took the time to explain the difference to you. One more time: Not understanding something is not the same as needing high compute. And the amount of compute we have today is colossal. Simulating a high level system (neurons or transistors) is not the same as simulating their low level implementations (all the atoms and electrons in either of them). Some large LLMs (interactive summaries of a large percentage of the entire human race's verbalized knowledge at moderate depth), can be run on a single MacStudio M3 Ultra with 512GB of RAM. Modeling a bee brain will require a tiny fraction of that computationally. > Most of what atoms do in any cell, including neurological cells, is operate a vast number of complex but common survival systems. And the very small fraction supporting specifically neurological behavior, do not meaningfully contribute at the level where specifics of individual atoms matter, but at a level many orders of magnitude higher in scale.

by nawgz 11mo ago

Nevermark 11mo ago

> A bee weighs 100mg. If they are 5% brain, their brain weighs 5mg. 5mg of carbon is 2.5 * 10^20 atoms. Any rational characterization of the problem has left the building here. Nobody wants to simulate any creature's brain or nervous system atom for atom. Most of what atoms do in any cell, including neurological cells, is operate a vast number of complex but common survival systems. And the very small fraction supporting specifically neurological behavior, do not meaningfully contribute at the level where specifics of individual atoms matter, but at a level many orders of magnitude higher in scale.

nawgz 11mo ago
We’re talking about whether or not humanity has enough compute to simulate a bee brain, how can us having orders of magnitude less transistors than there are atoms in the system we wish to simulate possibly be hand waved away? A single transistor doesn’t do much, regardless of how much you wish to baldly assert atoms are supposedly trivial.
- Nevermark 11mo ago
  Perhaps you are meaning to compare transistors with neurons? If we do that, then yes, a transistor is a lot simpler than a neuron. But transistors are also insanely fast compared to neurons, so transistors do far FAR more, per unit of time. A bee brain might have a million neurons, operating at maximum speed of about 250 Hz. 10^6 neurons x 250 Hz = 2.5 x 10^8 Hz for a bee brain. We can easily model that many neurons with a trillion transistors, operating at 100 Ghz. (If that sounds fast to you, keep in mind that CPU clock speeds account for many transistors switching in series.) 10^12 transistors x 10^11 Hz = 10^23 Hz for a CPU That is a factor of 4 x 10^14 more powerful. So yeah, the only problem for modeling a bee brain is identifying the organization of its neurons. Nature does a lot with a little. Trillions of bee life years went into designing a really efficient bee brain. --- Atoms: A bee brain might have 10^20 atoms. Atoms interact at speeds that are far beyond anything we are talking about here. But they don't "switch", they bounce around every which way and slowly end up reacting when they connect with the right conditions. This is called Brownian motion and its not computation, its natures way of using the chaos produced by heat to give compounds so many chances to find their right context that they eventually do. While we could not easily model that many atoms, nobody wants to (with regard to bees). Atoms are neither the "transistors" or the neurons of a bee brain.
  - nawgz 11mo ago
    Oh yeah, you're right, we have 4 * 10^14 more compute than an insectoid brain in real time. Come the fuck off it. This is the same guy who said rational characterizations had left right before waving away the complexity of a trillion atoms. Painful to imagine how smarmy you are.
    - Nevermark 11mo ago
      Well you have left your written record of (1) persistently confusing atoms with neurons, (2) an inability to explain where your confusion comes from outside of just repeating it, along side (3) snide responses to someone who in good faith took the time to explain the difference to you. One more time: Not understanding something is not the same as needing high compute. And the amount of compute we have today is colossal. Simulating a high level system (neurons or transistors) is not the same as simulating their low level implementations (all the atoms and electrons in either of them). Some large LLMs (interactive summaries of a large percentage of the entire human race's verbalized knowledge at moderate depth), can be run on a single MacStudio M3 Ultra with 512GB of RAM. Modeling a bee brain will require a tiny fraction of that computationally. > Most of what atoms do in any cell, including neurological cells, is operate a vast number of complex but common survival systems. And the very small fraction supporting specifically neurological behavior, do not meaningfully contribute at the level where specifics of individual atoms matter, but at a level many orders of magnitude higher in scale.