02-19-2018, 09:04 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: TL8 Computing
It is unlikely that emergent AI can emerge on our computers, but that has nothing to do with computer power; our computers just aren't designed in a way that will let it happen.
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02-19-2018, 09:31 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: TL8 Computing
Quote:
I'm with Rupert in saying that my computer of 2018 isn't even 10x as useful as the first one I had in 1998.
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Fred Brackin |
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02-19-2018, 10:01 PM | #23 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: TL8 Computing
Quote:
Computers and IT seem like a big deal because they are recent, and because, as Robert Heinlein noted, 'a nine days wonder is taken for granted on the tenth day', so the bigger changes over the last few centuries are taken as part of the background. But they're not even in the same league, so far, as those earlier changes.
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HMS Overflow-For conversations off topic here. |
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02-19-2018, 10:10 PM | #24 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: TL8 Computing
Quote:
As long as the hardware keeps getting more powerful, the software engineers have no strong motive to make the software more efficient, and pressure from marketing and related areas produces more bloat. Modern web pages download the equivalent of an entire book when sending a page no bigger than the equivalent page from 2000.
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HMS Overflow-For conversations off topic here. Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 02-19-2018 at 10:14 PM. |
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02-19-2018, 10:12 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: TL8 Computing
We don't have any idea what the brain's raw computing power is. It's not clear that it's even a meaningful measurement in that context.
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02-19-2018, 10:33 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: TL8 Computing
We can get estimates of neuron firing rates (total for the brain probably 10^10 - 10^11); how those compare to cpu instructions we don't know exactly, but given the very limited bandwidth of synapses, probably not dramatically more, so a teraflop is likely adequate processing. That's doable today, though the memory layout is much different.
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02-20-2018, 01:24 AM | #27 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: TL8 Computing
Quote:
But for gaming purposes, the kinds of things you're doing would benefit from the x10,000 speed increase. I'm thinking of things like database searches or brute force password cracking. Picture handling also- I vaguely remember a scene from some action movie where they were painfully waiting for the picture of a suspect to slowly raster onto the screen, whereas these days we can basically replicate Deckard's analysis of a Replicant's family photo. I'd second the recommendation for the Pyramid Thinking Machines article, it goes a long way to fixing some issues raised (although it has its own problems- such as multiple types of computer at the same TL having the same Complexity rating).
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Collaborative Settings: Cyberpunk: Duopoly Nation Space Opera: Behind the King's Eclipse And heaps of forum collabs, 30+ and counting! Last edited by Daigoro; 02-20-2018 at 01:30 AM. |
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02-20-2018, 02:01 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Dec 2013
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Re: TL8 Computing
If you want a morbidly hilarious (and technical) look at just how badly some stuff is programmed, this blog is excellent:
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/ |
02-20-2018, 03:01 AM | #29 |
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: USA, Arizona, Mesa
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Re: TL8 Computing
As Flyndaran and Daigoro suggested, if you want a really comprehensive treatment of this sort of thing, snag a copy of Pyramid #3/37: Tech and Toys II and look at the article Thinking Machines. It handles computers in Complexity levels matched roughly to flops, multiplying by 1,000× for each Complexity level. The TL progression is divided into quarter-TLs stretching from 6.75 to 10.75, matched fairly well to dates between 1930 and today. At TL11 and 12, Complexity is based on molecular computing with an assumed efficiency of bits per atom.
Its two main flaws are silence on the subject of storage costs — which is understandable — and the fact that TM Complexity does not line up precisely with RAW Complexity. For the latter, I put together a rough correspondence and a list of software and costs at that Complexity:
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02-20-2018, 04:09 AM | #30 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: TL8 Computing
Quote:
The mechanisation of acriculture wasn't one TL of change. Nor was urbanisation. Urbanisation has increased in proportion with TL and the percentage of people who worked in acriculture has fallen steadily since TL3. The most industrialised societies fell below 50% acricultural workers at late TL5, but some societies haven't reached that yet. There was no one TL shift that took us from an agrarian society to a post-industrial one. Some societies went from effective TL5 to effective TL8 in living memory, but that change, while rapid, isn't a one TL shift. Note also that cheap cell phones and the much less expensive infrastructure required compared to land lines mean that TL8 has brought instananeous communication to huge parts of the world and significant fractions of humanity that have effectively never had access to any such thing. Not to mention that having daily social contact with people from many different cultures, who live in different parts of the world, has shifted from being a feature for the super-rich elite, who travelled the world easily and could ignore the high costs of transcontinental cables and international phone calls, to being merely for the affluent on the scale of the world as a whole (i.e. anyone in Western countries and many other, richer societies, the luckier in many others), those who can afford a computer/smartphone and connection.
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