From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Mon Mar 26 2001 - 02:47:24 MST
On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Damien Broderick wrote:
> I ask this in ignorance: how quickly could such a monster look-up
> table--listed, presumably, by a god, or someone else equal to the
> task--be looked up (magic physics not allowed in this test)?
You can't. Global lookup tables don't work. Our brain does use lookup
tables (implemented in hardware) for mappings from spaces to other
spaces, though. It's done for speed reasons, as you can't afford a
100 m/s pulse to go places.
Also, computations are computations. Regardless how they're implemented.
FPUs frequently use lookup tables for trigonometric functions. Does this
mean FPUs don't do math?
> BTW, this possibility seems to me to fall over dead in just the way
> that Skinner's behaviorism did when famously assailed by Chomsky (and
> wasn't there an exchange along these lines just a few weeks ago? what
> a shame I can't look up the table and find out).
>
> Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:06:41 MST