Evolution Disclaimer Supported

The Advocate (Baton Rouge) ^ | 12/11/02 | WILL SENTELL

[PatrickHenry]

Post 7,000 exists; and it stands as an indelible fact of history. I could ask the mods to delete it, but then it wouldn't belong to anyone. What would that accomplish? It's not as if any of you creeps would achieve the glory. So it's me or nobody. I ask you now, which would you prefer? (Or is that a question that ought not be asked?)

[Hoplite]

Post 7,000 exists; and it stands as an indelible fact of history.

Jeez Patrick - look at the topic of the thread! Even if we accept that post #7,000 actually exists, now that it's yours, what makes it so important?

Paluxy retort: Post #7,000 and Post #1 exist on the same thread, ergo, your theory of increasing importance of primes is erroneous, as they are contemporary, not successive.

Last Mondayism retort: This thread was created at midnight on the night of 8/20-21, and everything before post #6,961 was created to make it look like #7,000 would be important, when in fact it's really only post #40.

Transitional post retort: If post #7,000 is supposed to follow post #6,999 - where are all the posts in between? Post #7,000 was obviously created as is - and is therefore no different nor more important than any of its supposedly preceding peers.

Etc...

Or is that a question that ought not be asked?

Lemme tell you a little story:

You know when I was a little boy, there was an old member of Darwin Central that posted on the same website as us, named Charles. He was ... I guess he was just a little more luckier than my daddy was. He got himself a prime. It was a big deal in round that website. Now my daddy hated that prime. 'Cause, his friends were always kidding him about, "They saw Charles out parading with his new prime and Charles is going to start another Crevo thread now he had a prime." One morning that prime showed up deleted. They complained to the Admin Mods. After that, there wasn't any mention about that prime around my daddy. It just never came up. One time we were poking around that website and we passed Charlie's "In Forum" page and we saw it was empty. He just packed up and left, I guess, he must of went somewhere else or something. I looked over at my daddy's face, I knew he done it. He saw that I knew. He was ashamed. I guess he was ashamed. He looked at me and said, "If you ain't better than a member of Darwin Central son, who are you better than?"

[longshadow]

So it's me or nobody. I ask you now, which would you prefer? (Or is that a question that ought not be asked?)

I think you are about to experience that awakening moment of lucidity, sort of like when the narrator character in "Fight Club" comes to the stunning realization that he and Tyler Durden are one in the same person....

"It's called the "changeover"....."

[dread78645]

So it's me or nobody. I ask you now, which would you prefer?

"PH takes a break from the Darwin Central annual awards banquet."

[tortoise]

Re: computational requirements for human level intelligence

Simulating the human brain at any level of detail is computationally very expensive and still a couple of orders of magnitude beyond our biggest systems. Virtually all estimates like this are based on models of biological equivalence, not computational equivalence. There is a very good argument to be made that biological equivalence for computing power is only as useful with respect to intelligence as the model being used.

Computational equivalence (equivalent silicon required to implement functions and structures) is being actively worked on by both the wetware neural modeling researchers and the theoretical computer science folks (mostly converging on Bayesian computational models from somewhat different directions). In the last few years, the average estimates for computational equivalence from both the wetware and hardware researchers have decreased significantly and from different research directions. Both the neural guys and the compsci guys seem to be estimating that computational equivalence is about two orders of magnitude below the biologically equivalent model.

The wetware researcher models are slowly converging with the compsci models, which is partly why their estimates roughly track each other. One of the major drivers of insane computational needs has been the conservative need to compute the state of the entire data structure at every time quantum. Current computational models on both sides of the fence have become much sparser and less pathological from a silicon standpoint. The models are still massively parallel (kind of like millions of very simple bucket-brigade stack machine macro structures), but the algorithms allow large quantities of state to be ignored in any time quantum.

More and faster CPU/memory are always welcome though, because even the mediocre approximations have a bad habit of unbounded resource growth under ideal conditions.

[Seamoth]

Well, I tend to think of opuses as attention spam, but, getting the word out there crosses a psychological barrier wherein you know that you'll forever be branded a crybaby & idiot if you -do- post again. So here's my official opus: I endeavor to be a builder, and to not to tear down others; I'm not reaching that goal on this site, so, bye. If I like you, you know how to get in touch.

[PatrickHenry]

Understood.

[PatrickHenry]

Here's another major prime I scored: Post 2,000.

[Hoplite]

What FreeRepublic called the Battle of 7,000 is over. I expect that the Battle of 8,000 is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Freeper civilization. Upon it depends the understanding of our own evolutionary history and the long continuity of our articles and our replies. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Patrick Henry knows that he will have to break us in this thread or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Freeperdom may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole website, including the non-crevo threads, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if FreeRepublic and its crevo threads last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

So there!

[PatrickHenry]

Earlier major primes in this thread:
6,000. BMCDA.
5,000. PatrickHenry.
4,000. Condorman.
3,000. Condorman.
2,000. viaveritasvita (who's that?).
1,000. donh.
666. donh.

[RadioAstronomer]

final bttt for posterity.

(Welcome to the desert of the real)

[RadioAstronomer]

bttt