Subject: (urth) Mr Million v Oreb

From: Nigel Price <nigel.a.price at virgin.net>
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 20:45:49 +0000

Apologies to hartshorn (no capital H, no terminal e). My friends the
Hartshornes do spell their name with a capital "H" and a terminal "e", and
that's probably why I wrote it that way. Sorry. Should have been
concentrating...

>>A cubic millimeter of brain has 14 kilometers
>>of biological wiring packed into it.   There
>is no comparion between the brain of any living
>>creature and ANY contemporary computer.

A splendidly precise answer to my inane speculations.

Maybe the difference between Mr Million's implementation of a stored human
personality and Oreb's, then, (apart from the obvious one that they appear
in different books, written at different times, when the author may have had
more or less experience of computer and/or completely different artistic
intentions!) arises from the fact that Oreb's bird brain is already stuffed
full to capacity with night chough subroutines (datatypes? function calls?),
leaving relatively little room to spare for downloaded cyber-deities.
Perhaps loading Scylla into Oreb is like installing two operating systems
and a double boot option onto your PC. There was plenty of space when you
were running just one OS, but it gets a bit crowded when you've got two.

Or then again, Oreb's characteristic speech pattern may be the result of
some sort of "bottleneck" in the capacity of Oreb's speech centres.

Or maybe it just made him interesting and distinctive as a character.

>>I won't comment on the Pharasees/Saducsees debate

I mentioned it once, but I think that I got away with it...

Nigel (no lowercase "W", no terminal "z")

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 21:40:01 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nigel Price" <nigel.a.price at virgin.net>
> leaving relatively little room to spare for downloaded cyber-deities.

The trouble is, of course, that a human personality needs a human brain to
hold it.   A smaller brain will not do.    Only a fraction of a human
prsonality could be embedded in a chough .

Today we guess that the fastest supercomputers carry out about the same
number of switching events per second as a human brain does.  But they are
BIG and consume a LOT of power.

One can only assume that the cybernetics of Wolfe's future is far advanced
over ours, because a handful of  "cards" seem to be able to hold something
like a human personality

> were running just one OS, but it gets a bit crowded when you've got two.

Candidly, organic data processing is not digital and it is probably
impossible to "download" a human or animal mind into a computer, full stop.
The whole buisness of the Holy Hues being visual downloading of personality
is very, very, dodgy.   But it is a familiar SF trope and Wolfe uses it
well.

    hartshorn

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 04:59:44 +0000

> From: "Andy Robertson" <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>

> prsonality could be embedded in a chough .

There are numerous documented cases of microcephalics with normal mental
functionality; a lot of the human brain is redundant, something that is
mentioned as a performance boosting factor in "5HC". This can be read
about in Carl Sagan's book _Broca's Brain_, somethign along with Ray
Kurzweil's book would have been available to Wolfe during the 70s.

> BIG and consume a LOT of power.

Measuring raw switching events per second is misleading. The 10^11
neurons in the brain might change state 20-30 times a second each, for
2.5 2.5 x 10^12 switching events a second. However, almost 10 years ago,
Pentium processors with 3.3 million transistors were running at 100
megahertz, for 3.3 x 10^14 switching events a second, and just consuming
a few watts.

Ray Kurzweil writes on this sort of comparison extensively; at current
rate of development, computers will approach the complexity of the human
brain in terms of informational and interconnected capacity in about 30
years.

-- 
Jeff Wilson
How Am I Posting? 1-800-555-6789
"If your SecOp can see you, so can the enemy." -Cpt Law

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 07:49:07 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Wilson" <jwilson at io.com>
>>mentioned as a performance boosting factor in "5HC".

I am begnning to have serious doubts about the "numerous microcephalics"
being true, and I'd appreciate a link to a primary source (not a dodgy
populist like Sagan).   I have chased these rumors up before and they seem
to come to nothing, or to ignore the fact that the "normal" person in fact
has serious behavioral deficiencies, though they may score averaage on an IQ
test.   But I bow to correction on this point.

I agree that a human brain can work at half human size.  After all, children
manage!   But not at 1/10 or 1/40 human size.

>. However, almost 10 years ago,

Thanks for the correction.   But the "30 years to equality" figure is one I
have heard before. Indeed I was hearing it 30 years ago, and  I suspect we
will be hearing it 30 years from now.

    hartshorn

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From: David DiGiacomo <david at slack.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 18:21:47 +0000

>prsonality could be embedded in a chough .

This is still unknown.  Perhaps the personality is stored only in the
human-specific parts of the brain, which are a fraction of the total
size.  If the information were organized efficiently, and non-essentials
removed, it might be possible to find room for it in a smaller brain.

>BIG and consume a LOT of power.

I don't think today's computers have anywhere near the storage capacity of
an animal brain.

>impossible to "download" a human or animal mind into a computer, full stop.

The conclusion may be valid, but the premise doesn't support it.  Audio
signals are not digital, but we have no problem downloading music into our
computers.

(There is also no technical obstacle to incorporating analog circuits in
computers.)

>is very, very, dodgy.   But it is a familiar SF trope and Wolfe uses it

The downloading is questionable enough, but what about the uploading?!?
Just how do the bios of the Whorl transmit information through their eyes?
All I can think of is that the upload version of the Holy Hues triggers
evoked potentials which can be detected in some way, but that's not very
satisfying.

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From: Grant Peacock <grantpeacock at yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 18:15:24 +0000

> megahertz, for 3.3 x 10^14 switching events a second, and just consuming

I'm not sure this is number makes any sense.  A 100 meg processor executes a
maximum of 10^8 operations per second, no matter how much memory it has
available.

My source of information is _I am Right, You are Wrong_ by Edward de Bono.  I
recommend this book.  Unfortunately my copy is on loan so I might miss a lot of
details here.  The computing knowledge is also shaky.  But here goes.  A neuron
has 2 states, firing and not firing, but don't let this fool you into thinking
of the brain as binary.  A neuron also has dendrites pointing to dozens of
other neurons, and it also has a variable stimulation threshold.  That is, it
needs a certain amount of "juice" from neurons that point to it before it
fires.  This limit changes depending on the amount of time since it fired
previously, and on levels of whatever chemicals to which it is sensitive. 
Finally, the amount of influence one neuron has over another can be increased
over time.  This happens when two connected neurons fire at the same time.

So, without too much effort to be efficient about the coding, let's estimate
how much computing power one would need to try to simulate a brain, using a
standard style of computer.  For each neuron, we need a list of other neurons
to which this one has a dendrite, and the sensitivity of each.  Here we're
talking probably 3 bytes * 20 or 30 neurons.  This is the hard part,
space-wise.  Keeping it on a disk would be way too slow -- I think it has to be
in memory.  So we need about 100 bytes per neuron, or 10^7 megs of RAM.  This
is 10,000 times the memory of today's PC but it is conceivable.

Now, the real bottleneck is that we only have one processor.  We can only look
at one neuron at a time.  The processor will have to make "passes" through the
entire list of neurons.  For each pass, on each neuron which is firing, it will
go down the list of dendrites and add the right amount of juice to all the
neighbors.  Let's suppose that a maximum of 10% of a brain's 10^11 neurons can
be firing at any given time.  Still, that's 10^10 * 20 additions that must be
performed in the slow part of the pass.  (I'm assuming an average of 20
dendrites/neuron, this may be too low.)  Adding probably takes more than 8 or
10 clock cycles but let's say 10.  So each pass takes on the order of 10^12
clock cycles.

Now, when we consider that a neuron might go on and off 20 times per second,
I'd say the passes I just described need to be performed at least 1000 times
per second to achieve realistic brain activity.  So our processor needs to run
at around 10^16 hertz, that is, do the work of 100 million pentiums.

The reason we're still behind by such a large factor is that each neuron is not
just a memory cell, it also performs some of the functions assumed by the
processor in a computer.  

-Peacock

__________________________________________________
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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 11:57:22 +0000

>evoked potentials which can be detected in some way, but that's not very

This is entirely speculative as I don't think there's any supporting text
but it would make sense if as you suggest the Holy Hues were a trigger
rather than a mechanism.  Perhaps akin to the susceptibility some
epileptics have to stroboscopic effects.

After all Pas had the opportunity to modify the 'cargo' when loading the
Whorl to insert any 'equipment' required and this is a universe where a
person's life experience can be assimilated by the ingestion of a finger's
worth of (cooked!) flesh and a preperation of a xenoc animal's gland.

Actually I don't think that the 'how' has any pertinant significance to
the understanding of the text: what has is that the process works.

Matthew

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 06:03:39 +0000

>      From: 
>           Grant Peacock <grantpeacock at yahoo.com>

> maximum of 10^8 operations per second, no matter how much memory it has

Not true; many processors have multiple instruction piplines inside that
let them do multiple operations each clock cycle. A Pentium I averaged
one instruction per Hertz, but that averages includes instances where it
can do two operations at once, each taking a couple of cycles to
complete. Later processors do even better, as they finish operations
sooner and are more likely to be able to handle dual instructions in
tandem. Regardless of the external speed, the processor is still made up
of millions of interconnected transistors, each of which can change
state hundreds of millions, and lately, billions of times per second.
 
> over time.  This happens when two connected neurons fire at the same time.

This sounds similar in scope to the interconnected transistor
architecture inside a microprocessor; their exact configuration and
levels of influence on one another is also adjustable nowadays, thanks
to the embarrassment over bugs publicly discovered in previous
generations of chips.
 
> at one neuron at a time.  

	This is wrong; there's no need to limit the computers to one processor
apiece. Multiprocessor computing is old hat, in fact the ancient ENIAC
had separate processing in each of its 64 interconnectable modules.
Hardwire multiprocessor designs run into the tens of thousands, letting
us simulate physical processes at subatomic levels; try googling for
ASCI White. You might also try reading about Beowulf clusters; freely
downloadable software exists to let you join arbitrary numbers of
networked computers into a virtual multiprocessing machine. A Beowulf
cluster of 100 rackmounted PCs with 10,000 megs of RAM each would take
up about as much room as Mr. Million
	Even if you are supposing the brain is to be simulated on a single
processor, general purpose machine instead of a special purpose
mechanism like Mr. Million, procs today are being designed with SIMD
instructions; Single Instruction, Multiple Data. A SIMD instruction to
add could be defined; it would quickly sum the adjacent neuron's juice x
sensitivity values and return true if they exceed the central neuron's
threshold. This would not be much different from the digital signal
processing used to de-blur photographs and reduce audio noise.

> The processor will have to make "passes" through the

Good reasons for multiprocessing and other options I mentioned above. A
neuron is much more complex than a transistor, but much less so than a
microprocessor. It would not be inconceivably difficult to design a
computing device with thousands or millions of subordinate computing
elements to simulate the effects of individual neurons, and to
coordinate their action in ways suitable to model the way real neurons
are connected. Hans Moravec and his ilk are keen on doing it.

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 17:35:29 +0000

> evoked potentials which can be detected in some way, but that's not very

Maybe this is what you mean by "evoked potentials," but I always assumed
that the eye thing was merely a trigger, that the Holy Hues put the brain
into some sort of receptive state so that some sort of electromagnetic
doohicky could read/write to the brain directly, not actually transferring
data through the optic nerve.

-Rostrum

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 16:34:52 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Straight" <straight at email.unc.edu>
> into some sort of receptive

TBOTLS is among other things a retrospective of SF.

Here, we see Cyberpunk being treated.

The main idea of Cyberpunk was to take "cyberspace" and fuse it with the
Spirit world.  Cyberspace becomes the place where the Gods live, where you
dream, where you may go after death.   It is this (utterly uncientific) idea
that gave Gibson's first novels their tremndous punch.

Wolfe is nodding to this, among other things.

    harthsorn

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