John Clark wrote:
> First of all I made an error, light moves 3,000,000 times faster than
> the signals in the human brain not 300,000 so the brain could be 600
> miles wide not 60. This just means that if a brain were much larger than that
> we would probably consider such a thing not a single entity as we consider
> ourselves but rather a colony of many very similar closely cooperating
> individuals. It's a matter of taste, from some perspectives a human
> mind is not just one thing either.
>
> One thing is objective, such a brain would think 3,000,000 times faster
> than we do, more actually because the components in it would be far
> smaller than neurons. There is something even more important than speed
> however, such a being would think astronomically deeper than we do.
>
If the brain is 600 miles across, and acts as a single entity, then its conscious thoughts would be about the same speed as a humans. The contributions from the sub-entities would take just as long to arrive as ours do, so I can't see it thinking (as a single entity) any faster than us. The subconscious deliberation behind each thought would of course be enormous.
Our particular brain model may not scale up very well. Perhaps a better model for the thinking process of such a large entity would be the supra-conscious thinking of the human race, but speeded up tremendously. By supra-conscious thinking, I mean the collective thinking we do through such processes as evolving languages, cultures, economies, science etc. Perhaps the subentities of a Jupiter brain would have time for interesting and fulfilling social lives, and well as contributing to the (to them) incomprehensible thinking of the collective entity.
Bernard
-- Bernard J Hughes bernard@timedancer.com Timedancer Systems http://www.timedancer.com -- Creative Laziness at its best --