Re: TI-H: mind vs. computer

To: ti-hardware@lists.ticalc.org
Subject: Re: TI-H: mind vs. computer
From: John Teffer <jdteffer@wcf.net>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 21:10:37 +0000
Delivered-To: ti-hardware-outgoing@towerguard.unix.edu.sollentuna.se
References: <006c01be2a2e$d76d9da0$0100a8c0@bobtheliz.idworld.net>
Reply-To: ti-hardware@lists.ticalc.org

David Knaack wrote:
> 
> From: Dan <danti@applecyber.dyndns.com>
> >Nah... you can't measure it.. cells die, and therefore memories die...
> 
> The neurons that you are born with are the same ones that you
> die with.  If they were to die regularly it is unlikely that we could
> continue to function for very long.
> 

It's estimated that we lose 50,000 neurons a day, out of a total of 100
billion.  The important concepts are stored with such massive redundancy
that a couple hundred thousand neurons is nothing.

In reference to the capacity and speed of the brain, I'm looking at book
from 1990 that puts the capacity of the average brain at 100 trillion bits
(sorry, to lazy to convert to terabytes), and that's assuming each neuron
can hold 1,000 bits.

Neurons perform an analog computation in ~5 milliseconds.  The brain has
about 100 trillion neuron connections, if one percent of the connections
are active, that gives us 200 trillion computations a second. (but I cant
seem to convert that to mhz in my head at the moment, so is my four bit
pocket calculator more powerful than my brain?  No, don't answer that.)

References:

Re: Re(2): TI-H: mind vs. computer

From: "David Knaack" <dknaack@geocities.com>