Ok, but what are Mersenne prime discoveries really actually a measure of?
It's not purely computational power, and it's not purely increased
networking and improvements in self-organizing groups, and it may have
cultural components as well. I mean, look at the massive decrease
post-1996...
So while I'm not disputing the use of things like this as abstract growth
measurements, I'm curious as to what you guys think that the underlying
contributing factors are, and in what proportions.
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
> Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 5:26 PM
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: Re: doubling time and singularity
>
>
> At 05:02 PM 12/1/01 -0800, Spike wrote:
>
> >In any case, the doubling time is getting wonderfully short.
> >I don't know what this has to do with the singularity, if anything,
> >but I had fun calculating it. {8-] Perhaps Damien will comment
> >with respect to his notions on page 86 of The Spike.
>
> Well, the mid-2000 material on pp. 86-7 of THE SPIKE is really a report on
> Spike's (mysterious) calculation of the then-next Mersenne prime. He
> predicted a nearly 80% chance of finding a three million digit prime by
> November 2001, and it popped up pretty much at the outer boundary of that
> call. Except that this one, as I understand, jumped right past 3 million
> and went to 4 million digits. The claim in the book is that a log plot of
> largest primes against time `shows a remarkably straight line heading for
> the three million digit prime and beyond' (p. 87). But maybe it's even
> faster than exponential now. Spike?
>
> Damien Broderick
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