From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Mon Nov 29 1999 - 06:45:31 MST
On Sun, Nov 28, 1999 at 07:15:06AM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> So you are sitting there with 10^50+ Instructions Per Year doing *what*?
My guess: being bottlenecked by serial processes. The human brain may
be massively parallel, but it's not _that_ parallel. Neural state
transitions give rise to outputs that have to be summed before you can get
the inputs for the next state transition: worse, the neural architecture
of the brain expects propagation delays, so you have to complete a lot
of neural state transitions before you can move on to computing the
next ones.
I suspect that it may not be possible to optimize an uploaded human mind
without (a) using external interfaces to properly designed subsystems, or
(b) virtually re-writing the whole thing from scratch. And an unoptimized
brain simply won't make efficient use of an MB -- once you get beyond
being able to simulate the state of every atom in every molecule of
every cell, as fast as possible using some local processors, you're just
wasting CPU cycles.
:
> The only thing that seems to make sense (since you have the capacity)
> is to upload everyone (who wants to be uploaded). Then it least things
> are really interesting while everyone expands their capacity and the
> politics of SI management come into existence and sort themselves out.
>
> I agree that this has the odor of being an altruistic "nice" idea.
> But, can anyone paint me a picture of themselves post-uploading with
> clear descriptions of what they intend to do (potentially by themselves)
> for the next trillion years?
Let me add something else:
Call me an optimist, but I think the vast majority of human being mean
well. Within the limits of the information available to them, they don't
deliberately act against their peers unless there's a perceived cost
to themselves for not doing so. Even an immature MB would be such an
incredible resource that, at least initially, conflicts over scarcity
wouldn't be an issue: people would have to figure out how to utilize
significant amounts of that resource before there could be arguments
about doing so.
Put it another way: the first uploads will be in the position of
nematode worms moving into a nice juicy sewage works the size of the
Earth. Is nematode #1 _really_ going to turn round and say "hey, guys,
in fifteen million years I'm going to fill this WHOLE tank; so
sorry, no room for latecomers ..."?
-- Charlie
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