From: wreck@fmsrl7.srl.ford.com (R. Cage)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Multiple Experiences
Date: 20 Aug 92 00:16:27 GMT
Organization: Ford Motor Company Scientific Research Labs, Dearborn, MI

In article <Aug.15.10.24.12.1992.10798@planchet.rutgers.edu> hsr4@vax.ox.ac.uk (Auld Sprurklie) writes:
>Hmm.  If you're dealing with the biological brain (i.e. the entity
>referred to as the primary in previous posts), then increasing the
>speed is certain to increase the rate at which metabolism occurs, and
>the end result of that (waste) usually results in heat in the organism
>if not cleared effectively (hence the silly bit about hats and heat
>sinks).
>You mention 'beating neurons' which suggests that we may be talking at cross-
>purposes - I can see that it would be possible to model the brain and operate
>the -model- at a much faster rate, but that's not what I was commenting on.

I can see I'm not spelling out my assumptions in sufficient
detail.  I'm assuming that the fastest way to get a functional
brain-equivalent is to replicate the connections and weights
between neurons, and what better way to do it than in situ?
I think the distinction between the reworked brain and a model
of a brain is mainly semantic.

Once you have an axon-equivalent that is N times as fast as an
axon for the same power consumption, a synapse-equivalent ditto,
you can remodel in place with the speed turned down and test as
you go.  When everything is reworked and tested OK, you can crank
up the speed.  *Then* you have the problem of managing boredom
when the world is thousands of times slower than it used to be.
Time-sharing is a means of managing this.

>This points seems to me to refer to manual activities (I include speech in this
>category), whereas I thought the original idea was to let a clone loose on a
>resource (a network, say) by 'plugging' it in and have it absorb information
>rather than indulge in discourse.

Absorbing information is fine if you're doing the equivalent of reading
a book, which is a sequential flow of information.  On the other hand,
if you are carrying on discourse, or traversing an index of information,
or anything else which has a lot of query-response interactions, isn't
easily made parallel and doesn't lend itself to read-ahead, you're going
to have problems with speed-of-light delay.  At 10,000 times standard
speed, you're going to have a "felt" 2.5 seconds of round-trip delay
if you're talking to a site only 23 miles away.  For all intents and
purposes, it will be as aggravating as talking to something on the moon.
The "world" with which you can interact comfortably will become much
smaller.  This applies to everything, including virtual realities
with actors spread over space.

Now suppose that your brain is time-shared between multiple threads
of consciousness, sharing a common long-term memory.  A thread doing
something at a distance can just halt during the delays, and thus
"feel" as if there is no delay at all.  Threads doing things such as
reading books or the equivalent can just take whatever time remains,
since the "input buffer" can be filled much faster than it can be
emptied even by 10,000 readers.  Boredom disappears.

>I could see even greater pitfalls if your
>clones are actually empowered to speak for you.  Just think how many enemies
>they could make for you :-).

And if they're not clones, but threads, they are *all* you.
So, how many enemies can you make for yourself if you can suddenly
interact with 10,000 times as many people?  How many friends?  Is
this intrinsicly a problem?

>> 2.)	All the different threads share a common neural network and
>> 	long-term memory; they are *all* you.  It is all done on your own.
> 
>Yep. That was also my point; if you can speed up the biological brain there is
>not so much need to clone it and you can do what you want alone.

In my terminology, I would consider a seperate set of hardware
to be the rough equivalent of a "clone", while another conscious
"self" sharing the memory of a common set of hardware is a "thread".

>Ah.  This again is different from what I'd originally discussed.  In
>this case, (forgive me if I'm wrong) you're talking about a primary
>being online to all clones, rather than having the clones go offline
>to perform their appointed tasks, and then come back online when
>completed (which is where I'd thought that schizophrenia might be a
>possible risk).

Even more complicated than that.  Let's do a simple example, using
3 sets of hardware (call them "cephalons") a 3x speedup and 3 threads
per unit.  Suppose cephalon A has threads alpha, beta and gamma, with
alpha being a master task, and beta and gamma being slave tasks which
absorb data from tasks on cephalons B and C and incorporate it into
long-term memory.  Cephalon B has a master task beta, and slave tasks
alpha and gamma which absorb and incorporate data from cephalons A
and C.  Cephalon C has a master task gamma and slave tasks alpha and
beta.

All units have all long-term memories on-line all the time; save
for time delays, they are all effectively one mind after a while.
(Short-term memories would not be common between threads different
threads on the same hardware, but would be common between the same
threads on different hardware.)  Now, suppose that cephalon B is
destroyed in an accident.  Just about all the knowledge and
experience of its master task beta are stored in both cephalons
A and C, so only the body is dead, the "soul" lives on.  Either
cephalon A or C could activate task beta at any time, so the only
effect on beta would be a change in point-of-view and possibly a
time delay (sleep period?).  This is a means to immunity from
accidental death.

>Again, I think you're talking about keeping the clones online - I hadn't
>realised that was your proposal - my apologies if you'd said that in your post
>and I'd missed it.  However, it's still a manual task that you're discussing,
>whereas I thought (I could be wrong) that originally we'd been talking about
>the possibility of gaining intelligence (as in information gathering) using
>offline clones.

When clones are "offline", you seem to mean that they go off and
do not restore contact for a relatively long period.  I'm not sure
how well long-term memories could be integrated in this fashion,
and if that is not practical, then you are reduced to having the
"clone" effectively make a report; you'd remember the report, not
the research.  Then there is the issue of what to do with the
"clone"; do you terminate it (how'd you like to go on a suicide
mission to the library?) or have lots of them accumulate?  I'm not
sure that this has any easy solutions.  On the other hand,
re-weighting a neural network is *the* way of making long-term
memories, which is why I believe that time-sharing a common network
lends itself more naturally to solving this class of problems.

>When I joined this thread (or barged into this thread :-)) the discussion had 
>been about hiving off intellectual tasks rather than manual undertakings, and 
>about the possibility of selectively copying certain skills from your own brain
>into a number of clones, and having them exercise those skills in information-
>gathering, returning upon completion to dump their accumulated experience into
>your brain.

I consider that a different concept.  If your systems are
sophisticated enough to make idiot-savant "agents" (as
distinct from clones) to do tasks and return information,
and the agents do not have enough of a sense of self to
be worth re-integrating upon completion of their task and
neither do they present moral difficulties about terminating
when their usefulness is ended, I have no troubles with this
at all.  However, until our understanding of the brain is
good enough to be able to make subsets tailored for certain
tasks, it will probably be easier to duplicate the whole thing.
-- 
Russ Cage                  wreck@fmsrl7.srl.ford.com (until 8/28/92)
            russ%rsi.uucp@destroyer.rs.itd.umich.edu (until whenever)
  *  When Ford pays me for my opinions, THEN they can call them theirs. *
                           _Bad_ cop.  No donut.