X-Message-Number: 25892 Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 09:21:55 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: To Mark Plus and Yvan Bozzonetti To Mark Plus: Your constant harping on scarcity has become a little boring. We may have scarcity of oil for a few months while existing systems for making oil from shale sands and even coal can be set up and run. Rationing for a few months is clearly rational if there really ever is a sharp falloff in the availability of oil. Yet not everyone fails to think ahead, and any people who can provide a solution will make lots of money --- so that this sharp falloff that you postulate may never happen at all. I regret repeating myself, but you can't just look at oil wells if you want to claim there will be a shortage. You have to look at lots of other sources which would come on line if oil wells went away. To Yvan Bozzonetti: A computer which runs programs imitating brains might do so very well, but it's not the same as an actual brain. Among other problems, it will have problems and restrictions that brains don't have, as a practical issue --- not to mention the problem of whether a close model of a brain implemented in a large parallel computer can really think, feel, and decide anything. And in any case, just how small will your electrical neuron be compared to a real one? A system designed to implement a program, and running that program, looks to me unlikely to have the compactness of a system which is physically designed to do what the program does. (A computer model of a pendulum or a fire hydrant is far from the best way to make either machine). You can pile as much math as you wish on this problem, but I don't think that approach will work at all. (And I'm a mathematician by training incidentally). I would start by first creating a form of life not based on biotechnology, and see how far I can take such a life form. And I will repeat the last sentence in my last message to you. Best wishes and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25892