The following is, I still think, a fairly interesting analysis of how to determine the amount of computing power would be required to create an artificially intelligent humanoid machine. You can probably guess what jump-started this train of thought, but I think it still holds up. I will admit, however that I overestimated the level of definition required for several of the measurments. I’ve cleaned up a few spelling and punctuation items to better communicate my intent.
Big inebriated thought of the day. A continuous universe does not exist outside the human mind. No “thinking machine” can conceive of anything continuous. No matter how small the slice, a digital machine can never produce anything but slices of time. Moments. No matter how completely, and how quickly you slice the universe, it will never be truly continuous.
A living conscious mind senses and perceives the universe as a continuous shifting whole, and understands it as such.
Neither view can be proved accurate.
If a computer could accomplish an associative pictorial, or an associative sensorial search, it could probably be considered alive.
An associative pictorial search would be my connecting an image of a unicorn into all of the following in simultaneous analysis. (Wow. Thought is preemptively multithreaded. I really can only hold one idea in my mind simultaneously. It’s just that I can bounce between them so rapidly it seems constant.)
1. Another picture of a unicorn.
2. The whole sense memory of looking at that picture with my family.
3. The associated thoughts of horses and zebras.
4. Many tangential full sensory experiences of viewing and touching and riding those animals.
5. Associating #4 to any time I’ve ridden a four legged animal (elephant).
6. The thought that each of those memory instants is the equivalent of at least an NTSC image file, about .5-.75 seconds of audio encoded in at least DVD audio quality (meaning all surround channels at 96kHz 24 bit audio), and sense memories equivalent to at least one for every bone, or point of articulation of the most sophisticated digital character, at a sensitivity of at least three axes of movement per point, with -1024-1024 bit positive and negative encoding captured at at least 500Hz.
7. Realize that this is just living life with the complexity of a memory. Think of this as a compressed version of life in the moment. Everything is captured to memory in low-res, low framerate version. Realize that to create a moment of life is to not only add touch (as opposed to kinesthesis), and smell, and high definition, but to increase the definition of other senses.
Now calculate number six into a per-second number of calculations, and you’ll have the minimum processing power required to encapsulate one instant of virtual Memory.
In a second, “simultaneous” moment, I was following the thought of trying to type the first list one handed, I had an associative-sensorial search initiate. I felt that the experience/moment might resemble a hypothetical sense moment for Stephen Hawking early in his disease progression. Realize this hypothetical simulation was occurring side by side with the thought in #6.
What if Stephen Hawking’s translators have simply learned physics so well they are stating their own theories by now?
If a brain could perform the math to record all points of measurement listed in the list, at the listed data rates, and output to all output channels the same data at about 4Hz, )the time I’m arbitrarily attributing to the time-slice interval between an impulse and an “instant” conscious decision process, such as the decision to dodge left instead of right), and creating a short term (1 sec), mid term (4-10 sec), and long term (10 sec-1min) forecast( keyframe for rendering movement [takes into account assumed values for some points of measurement/articulation picking those values from a table of similar experiences, which is in itself made up of low-res memory moments]), I think it could be considered alive.
Integrate pain at VBR and touch at 250DBI, 8 bit depth, 8 bit pressure, 8 bit wet, 32 bit heat. Video in the conscious moment is much more wide-screen. 18/6 ratio.
Emotional state might be measured in -512 sad-happy+512, -512-Energy+512, -512-Gravity+512, encoded at 20Hz.
Highest bit rate should be to the sense in primary focus, with other senses at perhaps 2/3 sample rate.
Don’t forget either taste or smell.
Memory is constantly culled for irrelevant info.
A “finished” memory might occur more than once an hour. I say finished, meaning it is a keyframe from which a projection of any previous moment can be made. So if memory is initially captured at several times a second, you eventually arrive at perhaps 12 frames kept from any day of your life, an entire “memory” (which might come to represent a second, a minute, an hour, a half a day, or a whole day, perhaps even a week. These projections and memories can, of course, overlap on a timeline. can, however be built from a frame by extending some fourth dimensional, “trending points”. Thus, a series of measurable moments can be condensed into the timeline of our memory. These “moments. can even be measured by how long a period they cover at what variable resolution). This can give you an average density, with which you can determine your memory needs for life. Incorporate the culling of the least important data, since we know that memories fade in definition and resolution with age. Your brain continually compresses the oldest data. This might explain the true amount of storage in the human brain, thus showing an ultimate memory capacity for a healthy person dying of old age.
