Re: Intelligence

[Antti Huima <huima@xxxxxx>]

On Mon, 10 May 1999 Compgo123@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> >I thought the memory capacity of a brain is much much larger than that of
> >a modern computer. Humans cannot memorize 1GB of random bytes. However,
> >they can remember thousands of human faces, memories, feelings; even the
> >rudimentary behaviour of humans such as walking probably requires lots of
> >memory. I'm pretty sure that the memory and deductive capacities of a
> >brain is still far greater than that of a computer, although they don't
> >work in a similar manner.
> 
> Maybe there are some truth in your arguement. But I'd like to point out 
> couple counter exmples. A bitmap of a face, let's say, takes 4k bytes. Then a 
> thousand faces only take 4 Mbyte. Don't even mention that the computer knows 
> the exact distance between eyes on each face. Another example is how many 
> people can remeber very words without error in a novel, for example, 'The war 
> and the peace'. And how long can he maintain this memory without practicing 
> every day? How about 100 novels? It happens occasionally in top pro games 
> that one player played a joseki with one move in the wrong order and lose 
> couple points. Of course, deduction is a different matter.
> 
> Dan Liu

I agree on your point that computers are better to store bit strings and
other "exact" data. What I mean with faces etc. is that we remember much
things that we do not think we are remembering. We can recognize a small
detail of a face we haven't seen for years in a blurry photograph, and say
"oh, that's my old friend". It would seem plausible to me that we remember
quite a lot of things but only in a different way than computers.

A computer's memory is basically a collection of, say, 1,000,000,000
flip-flops.

A human's brain consists of billions of interconnected neurons, and the
interconnections form the memories. You cannot compare these two models
easily. 

-- 
Antti Huima
SSH Communications Security Oy