Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
zBrown
Ice climber
|
|
Behold Summit, a new supercomputer capable of making 200 million billion calculations per second. It marks the first time in five years that a machine from the United States has been ranked as the world’s most powerful.
And just how many can a human brain do?
And still get the quote into the wrong spot
Can't compare gorillas and orangutans
The specs for this $200 million machine defy comprehension. Built by IBM and Nvidia for the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Summit is a 200 petaflop machine, meaning it can perform 20 quadrillion calculations per second. That’s about a million times faster than a typical laptop computer. As the the New York Times put it, a human would require 63 billion years to do what Summit can do in a single second. Or as stated by MIT Technology Review, “everyone on Earth would have to do a calculation every second of every day for 305 days to crunch what the new machine can do in the blink of an eye.”
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
jogill: Tell me no-thingness is more fun than that!
I can’t.
I began installing electrical and wall lights in our front courtyard, and it got to 106 today. I got into the workshop now and then when I could use a vice or a table, but I was out a fair amount today. At first I thought, I should quit. But then my curiosity arose, and I wondered how I would do it.
So, ok, you cannot drink enough water and work; and shade is wonderful when you can find it. The sun is like a hammer striking an anvil.
Over the afternoon, I could watch the dials go down on the human control panel in my control room. Thinking slowed and became less reliable; power levels diminished considerably, and every little task got trying. Tools were too hot to touch, and rawhide gloves were clumsy. By the end of the afternoon, I had a blazing headache and I just wanted to lay on the floor.
Nothing was good or bad; it was just consciousness operating. It was fun to watch.
Jogill: Does awareness have a will of its own? Its own identity?
It’s a grand capability.
|
|
zBrown
Ice climber
|
|
Primates sometimes get high by the strobe effects of sunlight filtering through the trees in the late afternoon as they brachiate
Really?
Really!
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
Cool.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon-day's sun
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 9, 2018 - 11:27am PT
|
One of the things that in retrospect amazes me is that nobody ever just dies from heat stroke while wall climbing in the valley. Felt like it a few times. But I was like 25.
Off topic, if you ever get the chance, read Tony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Nuff said.
|
|
Ward Trotter
Trad climber
|
|
Primates sometimes get high by the strobe effects of sunlight filtering through the trees in the late after
It is likely not the "strobe effect" which produces any sort of discernible high but rather both skin and eye exposure to sunlight producing serotonin, dopamine, and melatonin-- all powerful hormones/neurotransmitters that profoundly effect mood.
There have been numerous reports of baboons (terrestrial primates) even fighting one another over choice pieces of sun exposure sights (normally on higher ground) primarily in the early morning or late afternoons.
Any human who enjoys regular sun exposure (especially when combined with cold water immersion) can attest to its almost addictive nature.
Off topic, if you ever get the chance, read Tony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Nuff said.
This individual likely engaged in lifestyle factors that trashed both his mitochondria and dopamine/serotonin production leading to his demise. Celebrities who are constantly filming shows, frequent jet travel, high cell phone usage, and around large numbers of people are all blue light toxic and overexposed to EMFs.
As the tech industry rolls out 5G look for suicides to continue to skyrocket.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 9, 2018 - 12:35pm PT
|
Ward, do you believe physical causes "explain" the whole shebang, or is there more that is not "magic" nor yet a "cause?"
|
|
Ward Trotter
Trad climber
|
|
is there more that is not "magic" nor yet a "cause?"
You'll have to explain this phrase a little further.
Also, by "shebang" do you mean this issue of suicide or of existence in general?
|
|
Ward Trotter
Trad climber
|
|
Ward, do you believe physical causes "explain" the whole shebang, or is there more that is not "magic" nor yet a "cause?"
My beliefs as to physical causation extends probably about as far as your own extends, that is, we can both agree that you turning the ignition in your car will cause it to start (usually) Most events available to human sense perception are physical/causal.
Does such a series of causal antecedents explain the universe, or the multiverse, or the multishebang-- I don't know. No one does.
Here is a recipe likely not included in the book by the famous chef:
Step 1: Completely divorce yourself from natural light-dark cycles.
Step 2: Mix in nnEMF 24/7.
Step 3: Lower dopamine with a pharmaceutical cocktail of mind-altering drugs.
Step 4: Die
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
or is there more that is not "magic" nor yet a "cause?"
Is awareness an effect without a cause, even though it's generated by the brain? How could that be?
|
|
Ward Trotter
Trad climber
|
|
Is awareness an effect without a cause, even though it's generated by the brain? How could that be?
It has always seemed to me that the burden of proof lies with those contending the brain contains accessible non-causal factors outside the operations of the known physical structure and function of the brain.
I'm all ears.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 9, 2018 - 01:59pm PT
|
the burden of proof lies...
What "proof" would you recognize beyond a physical cause?
Part of this investigation is to start looking at reality in other then causal terms.
What happens when we look at reality in terms of causes is we tend to start considering said causes as fundamental. But even physics - which in large part boils down to bundles of energy - acknowledges that energy itself is not fundamental, is not a quantitatively fixed "cause" exerting a fundamentally fixed effect.
A friend recently quoted this:
An oddity of photon energy, or any form of kinetic energy (i.e., the energy of motion), is that its value is not fundamental, but rather is dependent on the motion of the observer. If you move towards a photon, you'll find its energy appears greater (as its wavelength is blueshifted), and if you move away from it, its energy will be lesser, and it will appear redshifted.
If you removed time from the investigation, even relative "causes" become another animal altogether.
Time, it seems, is not "out there," but arises from a perspective. Perhaps causes are the same.
At bottom, it seems like this obsession with causation works off the first assumption based on Ilya Prigogine's reprise that "Time precedes existence."
Just throwing it out there...
|
|
Norton
climber
The Wastelands
|
|
Anthropologists believe that the evolutionarily rapid increase in our ancestors brain size was a result of, after coming down from the trees, learning how to seek out, kill and eat largely animal rather than vegetable food sources, thereby steadily ingesting much more protein.
The increase in primate cranium size correlates well with the transition to bipedalism.
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
Time, it seems, is not "out there,"
To some extent I agree. The perception of the passage of time of course varies considerably, depending upon how the body and mind are being manipulated. Being put in a medical coma may result in awakening with no concept of time's passage; one second you are conscious, then the next second you awake and thirty days has passed.
The older you are the more it seems time flies. But to a child watching a clock five minutes may seem an eternity. (I wrote a math note about this for researchgate.net)
I like the idea that reality is like a loaf of bread. If you are awake for five minutes you can watch the physical changes around you, the flow of reality. If you are awake for only five seconds you are conscious of fewer changes. If you regress to a hypothetical instant you will witness no change. So a hypothetical slice of infinitesimal width has no dimension in time.
During that five minute interval reality is assembled by the mind like a movie film that pieces together instances of no time in a way that gives the illusion of flow, continuity, and the arrow of time (and cause and effect).
Or not.
;>)
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
An oddity of photon energy, or any form of kinetic energy (i.e., the energy of motion), is that its value is not fundamental, but rather is dependent on the motion of the observer.
yet the length of an object's four-vector, comprised energy and momentum, remains invariant in any inertial reference frame (a frame moving with constant velocity).
this was the essential insight that Einstein gleaned from his consideration of electron motion in electromagnetic fields, and lead to Special Relativity which displaced Galilean Relativity (the later which Newton made into one of the famous Laws of Motion).
What is fundamental then? the four-vector and the space-time metric that defines it.
So easy to take confusion and spin a tale from it...
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
...as far as our minds are concerned, kinetic energy is an exact concept, and until you get going near the speed-of-light it works exactly as old Izzy said.
The pre-Einstein concept of kinetic energy is accurate enough for most of our calculations, we use it to fling satellites across the solar system, colliding with the gravitational field of planets and the Sun to scatter off to other planets with gains in kinetic energy much larger than we could provide by propulsion, to get the data in the time of a graduate-students tenure instead of the decades of a plodding direct trajectory.
Our brains contain a "physics package" that is capable of computations most of the people posting to this thread would be challenged to write down, let alone solve, let alone solve in the real-time stream of input our brains process.
Thank your genetic inheritance for that hard won capability.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 9, 2018 - 06:34pm PT
|
What is fundamental then? the four-vector and the space-time metric that defines it.
----
Ed, I think you are using the word fundamental in the loose operational sense of "the most basic elements essential for understanding the kinds of problems you want to solve with physics at this level."
Not what I was driving at.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
what are you driving at?
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
At bottom, it seems like this obsession with causation works off the first assumption based on Ilya Prigogine's reprise that "Time precedes existence."
There is a bottom? Is it fundamental?
I don't know whose "obsession with causation" you refer to. I prefer to see people as curious (a product of our particular evolutionary path into generally useful abilities rather than abilities well adapted and highly specialized for a niche (sorry!)).
People are curious about different things, naturally, and that has worked out well for our gene pool, in the past.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!