X-Message-Number: 7855
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 20:28:43 -0800
From: John Roscoe <>
Subject: Time and Uploading...

Thomas Donaldson wrote:
> But the definition of von Neumann machine omitted one major issue
> important to us as human beings (and it would remain important even if we 
> can become immortal): the TIME required for these machines to work. We want
> parallel machines so that we can solve our problems in a reasonable time.

So what's a reasonable time? One element to consider is the relativity
or perhaps (if I may be forgiven a liquid temporal metaphore) viscosity
of the events that define our perception of the passage of time. ie:

If the machine ran very quickly when its load was light (not much going
on eventwise), and very slowly when its load was heavy (many events
overlapping and changing),
Then the people watching from the outside would see the entity's
universe flow like paint thinner through the dry boring parts and crawl
like molasas through the interesting parts.
Thus to an observer my life would run _exactly as fast as the observer
could comprehend it_ (for example: the optimum visual event ratio is 10
frames per second.)
AND
The entity in the machine would perceive the busy outer world as spurts
water from an overflowing drain, bits of information lost (kind of like
the home shopping channel, transmitting at one frame for every two
seconds) and it would stick like peanut butter when nothing interesting
was going on (like waiting for a dentist).
Therefore: Nothing would change for the entity. My perception of events
*does naturally* skip a beat and slip up when things are really jumpin',
albeit irregularly. And waiting for a dentist appointment really does
take longer than eating one whole cherry pie (if you like cherry pie,
that is).

MEANS: People outside of the machine would be, in effect, omnicient in
the opinion of those inside the machine. People inside the machine would
be consistently interesting all of the time, the machine's "cruising"
event/time ratio would be static to those watching from the outside.

BUT: if the machine were to designed to process its events with the
conceptual hyperboly that designs cars that run 260 miles an hour on a
continent where the limit is 55, it would see the outside world as
something infinitely boring and not worth paying attention to at all.

-- 
John Roscoe

"I am certain that there is a name for my disorder, 
but it is the one thing that I do not wish to know."


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