links for 2008-06-27
June 27th, 2008 1:34:48 am pst by 
Sterling Camden
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After all, they won’t have a successor OS until 2010.
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Cool tool! Save some time making it rhyme (Thanks to teeni the Internet genie)
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We have met the enemy, and they are “we”.
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Of all things freedom’s most fine. Thanks, Paul.
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#0. Right here in my home office.
Thanks, Toni. -
So if we do ever become complex enough to understand it as it is now, will it then have become even more complex in the process?
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Arjan always has great software development links — somehow I got in there this time! Thanks, Arjan!
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You’re just too modest
That’s not what she said.
So if we do ever become complex enough to understand it as it is now, will it then have become even more complex in the process?
I think it would have to be. I’m rather convinced of it, really.
For us to continue to have room in our brain for the automatic functions as well as the conscious functions, all the other knowledge the individual has amassed, and still work out, correctly, the inner mysteries of the human brain as it is now, it will have to become more complex to store and analyze all that information, whereas a computer today can analyze any other computer today not because of sophistication but because of complete lack of true sophistication.
That isn’t to say high-end hardware is awe-inspiring, but it doesn’t come even close in complexity to the wetware that you and I (and every other living, breathing creature) carry in our skulls.
So, in summary, our brains will have to become more complex in order to be able to understand how our current brains work. The only question is, will one of these, archaic and less-evolved, brains make it intact to be analyzed and, in the end, who will care since they will have more complex minds to think about?
Or will we be able to amass complexity by combining our brainpower into some shared analysis engine (perhaps a computer program) that would be capable of analyzing our brains without measurably improving them individually?
I don’t know. Have you ever read a sci-fi short by Isaac Asimov (I forget where I first read it) called The Last Question?
I think your proposed machine would evolve into that sort of machine.
Azimov rocks.
Indeed. I have two anthologies he edited. Before the Golden Age and Tomorrow’s Children. IMO Before the Golden Age is the superior of the two.
I don’t think I’ve seen either of those. I’ll have to look them up sometime.
They’re older anthologies, so you might have to look at second hand bookstores. Well worth the hunt, though.