Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors
1–10 of 124 posts
Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors
#2Unfortunately, that's only for a number of cells equivalent to 1% of a human brain. A full brain's worth of simulation would take 2.5 days....although that much is probably not necessary. It will fall soon enough, though.
Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors
#3At what point does this become unethical (if ever)?
Before you answer, please consider how certain you are that you are not a simulation.
Edit: I don't know the answer, and there probably is a large gray area. But I do know this starts to make me uncomfortable the more accurate it gets. Time to go reread Egan's Axiomatic again, I guess.
Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors
#4Unfortunately, that's only for a number of cells equivalent to 1% of a human brain. A full brain's worth of simulation would take 2.5 days....although that much is probably not necessary. It will fall soon enough, though.
The thought that we are maybe two decades away from having the computing power to simulate a human brain in realtime (and much more than that subsequently) is astounding, even in this age of technological wonder.
Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors
#5Does anyone know what it means to simulate brain activity? Is the brain being emulated in any meaningful way? Or is it just modeling the physical behavior of neurons?
Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors
#6At what point does this become unethical (if ever)? Before you answer, please consider how certain you are that you are not a simulation. Edit: I don't know the answer, and there probably is a large gray area. But I do know this starts to make me uncomfortable the more accurate it gets. Time to go reread Egan's Axiomatic again, I guess.
Even if you are a simulation, would you prefer not to exist? What, really, is the difference between reality and a perfectly-executed simulation? It's hard to condemn one without condemning the other.
Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors
#7Unfortunately, that's only for a number of cells equivalent to 1% of a human brain. A full brain's worth of simulation would take 2.5 days....although that much is probably not necessary. It will fall soon enough, though.
So it will take about 26.6 years before we can simulate a brain in real time, only considering Moore's Law. (Calculated this without pen and paper using my iPhone calculator, so somebody should check this ;) )
Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors
#8At what point does this become unethical (if ever)? Before you answer, please consider how certain you are that you are not a simulation. Edit: I don't know the answer, and there probably is a large gray area. But I do know this starts to make me uncomfortable the more accurate it gets. Time to go reread Egan's Axiomatic again, I guess.
I think it becomes unethical once we see strong evidence that the system could be self-aware. Before that, it's just a simulation. Simulating storm activity doesn't make it rain.
Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors
#9At what point does this become unethical (if ever)? Before you answer, please consider how certain you are that you are not a simulation. Edit: I don't know the answer, and there probably is a large gray area. But I do know this starts to make me uncomfortable the more accurate it gets. Time to go reread Egan's Axiomatic again, I guess.
Even if you are a simulation, would you prefer not to exist? What, really, is the difference between reality and a perfectly-executed simulation? It's hard to condemn one without condemning the other.
If I'm a simulation, I'd prefer to exist and have a legal right to continue doing so.
Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors
#10To put this claim in perspective, we are still unable to simulate a single cell by modeling everything we know from biochemistry, even if we ignore molecular dynamics. Mostly this is because we don't know what many genes and the proteins they encode do.
This matters, for example, if we want to simulate neuronal plasticity or the effect of antidepressants. We're an incredibly long way from a full simulation, which would also require integration with the rest of the nervous system.