Re: ants and posthumans

Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Wed, 21 Oct 1998 22:14:54 -0700

> ---Robin Hanson <hanson@econ.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
> > See: Lilliputian Uploads. Extropy 7(1):30-31, 1995. A copy is at
> >http://hanson.berkeley.edu/lilliput.html
>
> > Joe Jenkins wrote: People's strong need for
> > the familiar physical sensations and comforts would have to
> satisfied in > a virtual reality that had little direct connection to
> ordinary physical > reality.

joe, as i grow older, time seems to go by faster always. life is logarithmic. sigh. {8-[ so slowing the clock is exactly what i wish to accomplish. granted that bit about a crashing wave taking a month is a bit extreme, but... {8-)

heres my reasoning on the ant thing. i figure 6E23 atoms of carbon have a mass of about 12 grams, and the brain is mostly carbon, and its mass is, i dont know, 1.6 kg? so we are on the order of 8E25 atoms in our brains? ok, 6E25 in my case, but that should be plenty to make 1E10 neurons and their supporting interconnections, even if we reduced our linear scales by 3 orders. in that case our brain mass would be reduced 9 orders, so my ant self could still have a 6E16 atom brain or six million atoms per brain cell. right? so perhaps the only reason ants are so stupid is that their brains are not very organized and the cells waste too many atoms on nonessential tasks... {8-] spike