Date sent: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 13:05:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Joe Jenkins <joe_jenkins@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Lilliputian Posthumians To: extropians@extropy.com Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
>
> ---"Joe E. Dees" <jdees0@students.uwf.edu> wrote:
>
> > Each neuron has up to 40,000 connections with other neurons, and
> > there are more than 30 billion (not million) of them in a human brain
> > weighing approximately 3 1/2 pounds. As complex and miniaturized
> > as it already is, and considering that the interaction of genetics
> and
> > experience has endowed each brain with a unique (although similar)
> > connection pattern, the difficulties involved in further shrinking
> them
> > are daunting, to say the least.
>
> I cannot improve on the case made by Drexler on this:
>
> Go to:
> http://www.foresight.org/EOC/EOC_Chapter_5.html
> and scroll down about 3/4 of the way.
>
> What parts of his arguments are flawed?
>
There is a vast difference between logically possible and empirically
plausible. The simultaneous mastery of miniaturization and
complexity involved in creating a single nanobrain capable of both
explicit self-awareness and continuous self-modification in response
to environmental input while maintaining such a self-referential
conscious identity would of necessity dwarf the totality of human
technical achievement from stone age to present. Drexler's article
reads like excellent speculative fiction, but imagination, no matter
how superb, does not automatically lead to manifestation or
reification.
> Joe Jenkins
> joe_jenkins@yahoo.com
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