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Comment by Allocator2008 | Hacker News Reader

Allocator2008

A $1000 computer with the equivalent knowledge of the whole human race won't happen because it is physically impossible.

There are 10^11 neurons or so in the brain. There are 10^10 (say) people in the world (more like 0.5 X 10^10 but anyway). So loosely there is an order of 10^20 neurons in humans on earth total. Avogadro's number has approx. 6 * 10^23 atoms in 12 grams of carbon, so, basically, you'd have to have 1 neuron simulation per atom to fit the entire human intelligence on say, your hand held mobile device, or close to a 1 : 1 simulated neuron to atom ratio. Transistors are cool but they ain't that cool boys and girls. Won't happen.

Now, you could fit a 10^10 neuron simulation in a 10 meter square server room 1 meter deep, that might be possible. So replicate this set-up 10 billion times and then you'd get the population of the human race on a computer. Slightly more than $1,000 tho. :-)

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You're thinking with modern technology, not future technology. What if $1000 (minus change to account for resource usage) bought me a computer seed that grew into a massive supercomputer in some relatively-short timeframe?

If self-replicating technology is possible, then $1000 for that much computer power would actually be a ripoff.

(I'm not claiming that such a thing is possible, per se. But then again, we are such seeds ourselves, or rather, seeds that grow one human's worth of computing power, so it's hard to argue that this is physically impossible. People who doubt this is possible need to explain why we're going to run out of progress before we figure out enough about biology to trick some existing organism into doing something like this for us. We don't even have to build the things ourselves...)

Arguing about whether the singularity is possible is a waste of time. Truth is that according to the original definition, it's pretty much inevitable, according to the physics we already know and the engineering that we can almost already do. The real argument people are trying to have is over the final limits of technology, and an awful lot of people argue for limits that are far, far too low, with very feasible paths for passing the limits plainly in view even today.

You fail for assuming future $1000 computer will be transistor based.

You're also being disingenuous in stating that every neuron contributes to a human's knowledge, that there is no overlap of knowledge between humans, and creating a computer with equivalent human knowledge requires a 1 to 1 mapping of neurons to thingers(say transistors, but could be quantum gate whatcha-ma-callits).

You could have a computer that can simulate one brain (or whatever "equivalent" means), but runs 6 billion times as fast as a human's -- or any of those factors in between (1000 brains, 6 million times speed).

Given 6*10^20 neurons in the human race, we have 10^3 atoms in 12 grams of carbon per neuron, a little bit more than 1 neuron simulation per atom. I'm not a neuron simulation or an atomic computing expert but even a few orders of magnitude above it (e.g. 1.2 kg of carbon) would give us sufficient computing power for a neuron AFAIK.

Also 10^11 neurons fit in roughly 0.001 cubic meters (i.e. a cube of 10cm), a thousand would fit in a cubic meter, your one brain simulation server room has space to a 100,000 actual human brains. Even if the simulation hardware occupies the same space as the human brain requires we would use only 0.01 cubic kilometers for the entire human race simulation. I have to agree that this will cost more than $1k, but is much smaller than your design.

Why would the 10^10 neuron simulation take up more space than an actual human brain? We would at least get to that level of technological advancement; we do, after all, exist, so the technology can't be that far-fetched ;)

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