I
love thinking about the future. I just read an article about Japan's
K Computer that, in August, took forty minutes to simulate one second
of human brain activity.
(http://io9.com/this-computer-took-40-minutes-to-simulate-one-second-of-1043288954)
It wasn't actually organized to simulate human brain function, just
the volume of processing power, or at least that's what I understand
from the article. Fuck man, I love this shit.
Before I was reading this article, I was reading something else from Reddit about how the Curiosity Rover just found water molecules on Mars – the estimate now is that about two pints of liquid water in every cubic foot of Martian soil (fuck off with your dumb imperial measurements, NASA, why change it to stupid-metres for the press release?). (http://gizmodo.com/nasas-curiosity-rover-just-found-water-in-martian-soil-1403908591) Apparently a manned mission to Mars is still a long way off because the levels of cosmic radiation astronauts would be exposed to would give them an untenable risk of developing cancer, so they either need to develop better radiation shields, or make the journey faster. One commenter suggested hijacking an asteroid and building habitation inside it before propelling it as a makeshift spacecraft to Mars and disembarking there. Fuck yes, I love that shit.
One of my favourite Reddit stories is the one about the guy who played a game of Civilization II for over ten years, and go to a point reminiscent of the global political situation in Orwell's '1984' (I should get make a tattoo-tally on my ass for each time I reference that fucking book IT'S SO GOOD!). (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/)In the game there were three civilizations vying for global dominance, stuck in a state of eternal war with extremely advanced technologies and democracy having failed. Scary, foreboding stuff. Civilization, as a simulation, may be flawed though, and we have no way or knowing whether that guy's game is a scary omen of things to come, or just a curiosity with no bearing on the real world. Well... we have no way, right now... (cue music – DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN)
Moore's Law states that “the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every 18-24 months. This means that processing power doubles in that time for a machine of the same size. This means that the K Computer capable in forty minutes of processing an amount of data equivalent to that processed by the human brain in one second, will be able to do the calculations of a human brain, in real-time, in roughly twenty-two years. Two human brains two years after that. Four two years after that... in sixty-six years, a computer capable of simulating the operation of eight and a half billion human brains in real time will be as large as the K Computer is now. That's assuming Moore's Law holds, which it probably won't according to the current theories. Growth may increase at an increasing rate, making the time even shorter. It could do that, or alternatively, the time span could be reduced, so it could simulate an entire human lifetime in the blink of an eye, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of human lifetimes...
So what does any of this wild posturing by a twenty-two year old comedian who dropped out of first-year university physics to 'study' goon in Adelaide actually mean? Well, what it means, is that whenever a computer exists that is powerful enough to simulate a human life in the blink of an eye and retain all of the information accumulated over that life for analysis, we essentially would have the data available to predict the future. Run simulations on the past. Recreate events, or see how events are going to play out.
Suddenly Sid Meier's 'Civilization II' becomes the ancestor of a real-life program that could be used to determine the trajectory of current world events, with every reasonably possible variable accounted for. World Peace talks taking a sour turn? Run the simulation, see where this chain of events is leading us. Nuclear War imminent? Run the simulation. Climate Change Sceptics still busy talking about how the entire solar system is heating up and 'historical variance' and bullshit, bullshit, unfounded, rhetorical bullshit? Run the simulation. Oh look, your house was swarmed with angry, starving climate-refugees and while you were busy taking a shit. Unlucky for that Mr Bolt, lucky for you, here in the real world, that it was just a simulation, now how about those solar panels?
AGH! There's no way of telling what the future will bring, I know that. I'm not banking on any of this happening, but it's so much fun to speculate, just for now, while we run around on errands and the world spins.
I've been listening to Pete Holmes' album this week, it's called 'Impregnated With Wonder'.
Peace, Taco.
Before I was reading this article, I was reading something else from Reddit about how the Curiosity Rover just found water molecules on Mars – the estimate now is that about two pints of liquid water in every cubic foot of Martian soil (fuck off with your dumb imperial measurements, NASA, why change it to stupid-metres for the press release?). (http://gizmodo.com/nasas-curiosity-rover-just-found-water-in-martian-soil-1403908591) Apparently a manned mission to Mars is still a long way off because the levels of cosmic radiation astronauts would be exposed to would give them an untenable risk of developing cancer, so they either need to develop better radiation shields, or make the journey faster. One commenter suggested hijacking an asteroid and building habitation inside it before propelling it as a makeshift spacecraft to Mars and disembarking there. Fuck yes, I love that shit.
One of my favourite Reddit stories is the one about the guy who played a game of Civilization II for over ten years, and go to a point reminiscent of the global political situation in Orwell's '1984' (I should get make a tattoo-tally on my ass for each time I reference that fucking book IT'S SO GOOD!). (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/)In the game there were three civilizations vying for global dominance, stuck in a state of eternal war with extremely advanced technologies and democracy having failed. Scary, foreboding stuff. Civilization, as a simulation, may be flawed though, and we have no way or knowing whether that guy's game is a scary omen of things to come, or just a curiosity with no bearing on the real world. Well... we have no way, right now... (cue music – DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN)
Moore's Law states that “the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every 18-24 months. This means that processing power doubles in that time for a machine of the same size. This means that the K Computer capable in forty minutes of processing an amount of data equivalent to that processed by the human brain in one second, will be able to do the calculations of a human brain, in real-time, in roughly twenty-two years. Two human brains two years after that. Four two years after that... in sixty-six years, a computer capable of simulating the operation of eight and a half billion human brains in real time will be as large as the K Computer is now. That's assuming Moore's Law holds, which it probably won't according to the current theories. Growth may increase at an increasing rate, making the time even shorter. It could do that, or alternatively, the time span could be reduced, so it could simulate an entire human lifetime in the blink of an eye, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of human lifetimes...
So what does any of this wild posturing by a twenty-two year old comedian who dropped out of first-year university physics to 'study' goon in Adelaide actually mean? Well, what it means, is that whenever a computer exists that is powerful enough to simulate a human life in the blink of an eye and retain all of the information accumulated over that life for analysis, we essentially would have the data available to predict the future. Run simulations on the past. Recreate events, or see how events are going to play out.
Suddenly Sid Meier's 'Civilization II' becomes the ancestor of a real-life program that could be used to determine the trajectory of current world events, with every reasonably possible variable accounted for. World Peace talks taking a sour turn? Run the simulation, see where this chain of events is leading us. Nuclear War imminent? Run the simulation. Climate Change Sceptics still busy talking about how the entire solar system is heating up and 'historical variance' and bullshit, bullshit, unfounded, rhetorical bullshit? Run the simulation. Oh look, your house was swarmed with angry, starving climate-refugees and while you were busy taking a shit. Unlucky for that Mr Bolt, lucky for you, here in the real world, that it was just a simulation, now how about those solar panels?
AGH! There's no way of telling what the future will bring, I know that. I'm not banking on any of this happening, but it's so much fun to speculate, just for now, while we run around on errands and the world spins.
I've been listening to Pete Holmes' album this week, it's called 'Impregnated With Wonder'.
Peace, Taco.
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