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An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped

economist.com

191–200 of 208 posts

Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped

#191
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends which of the many similar but subtly different things with that name was meant. In this context, what matters is "how many operations can I get done for a dollar?", and that's still very much improving very fast, albeit not quite as fast as before.

It applied to transistor density and it’s over. Its completely and utterly true and it’s agreed upon by experts. https://cap.csail.mit.edu/death-moores-law-what-it-means-and... . I’m not making this stuff up.

The original formulation was "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year", which stopped being true almost immediately and very soon got mixed up with "performance doubles every 18 months".

Dennard scaling is long dead, as is the clock frequency race; but features are still slowly getting smaller (your own link says so), as is energy consumption per operation. The latter, J/op, is the critical issue for big data centres. Brains are obviously better than transistors at this, and IIRC by that measure transistors are still getting roughly twice as good every 2.6 years.

Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped

#192
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It applied to transistor density and it’s over. Its completely and utterly true and it’s agreed upon by experts. https://cap.csail.mit.edu/death-moores-law-what-it-means-and... . I’m not making this stuff up.

The original formulation was "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year", which stopped being true almost immediately and very soon got mixed up with "performance doubles every 18 months". Dennard scaling is long dead, as is the clock frequency race; but features are still slowly getting smaller (your own link says so), as is energy consumption per operatio…

> but features are still slowly getting smaller (your own link says so)

From the link: "Although miniaturization is still happening, the Moore’s Law standard of doubling the components on a semiconductor chip every two years has been broken"

I'm not saying things aren't getting smaller. I'm saying moores law is broken.

Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped

#193
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original formulation was "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year", which stopped being true almost immediately and very soon got mixed up with "performance doubles every 18 months". Dennard scaling is long dead, as is the clock frequency race; but features are still slowly getting smaller (your own link says so), as is energy consumption per operatio…

> but features are still slowly getting smaller (your own link says so) From the link: "Although miniaturization is still happening, the Moore’s Law standard of doubling the components on a semiconductor chip every two years has been broken" I'm not saying things aren't getting smaller. I'm saying moores law is broken.

> I'm not saying things aren't getting smaller. I'm saying moores law is broken.

And I'm saying that Moore's original statement was already broken by 1975.

And that the whole phrase means loads of different things that Moore never actually said, and the one of those which matters here is still true.

Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped

#195
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you would have thought all the years and years of "donations" to "cancer research" there would be constant news stories about how we accidentally cured a bunch of ancillary medical problems, and wow its all free to everyone because it was from donations! Never heard a single story like this

Human Genome Project and everything derived from it. IIRC, that was originally proposed as a cancer research project: "A Turning Point in Cancer Research: Sequencing the Human Genome" - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.3945817 Even without that I'm not sure why you think that's a good point — it's very easy to find serendipitous examples in medicine in general, e.g. viragra which was initially a heart trea…

“We were just doing cancer research and … we accidentally found the cure for homosexuality" (The Onion)[1]

[1] https://theonion.com/scientists-don-t-get-mad-but-we-acciden...

Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped

#196
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious if you could elaborate? It seems like the issue isn’t carbon credits, but the lack of a regulated level of carbon that would make them effective. Market incentives work best with dollar incentives, not virtue points.

I interviewed with a company a few years ago that offers people the ability to certify their carbon free generation in countries where there isn’t a regulated market (I.e. outside of the US, EU, etc.). I was pretty shocked by the low standards of proof required, and it’s fairly obvious that someone can seek accreditation from multiple competing certifying agencies. These unregulated credits get bought by heavy consum…

[deleted]

Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped

#197
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but features are still slowly getting smaller (your own link says so) From the link: "Although miniaturization is still happening, the Moore’s Law standard of doubling the components on a semiconductor chip every two years has been broken" I'm not saying things aren't getting smaller. I'm saying moores law is broken.

> I'm not saying things aren't getting smaller. I'm saying moores law is broken. And I'm saying that Moore's original statement was already broken by 1975. And that the whole phrase means loads of different things that Moore never actually said, and the one of those which matters here is still true .

> If you ask MIT Professor Charles Leiserson, Moore’s Law has been over since at least 2016.

That’s from the link. I largely agree. Colloquially it’s over after 2016. Any other interpretation is too pedantic imo.

Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped

#198
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not saying things aren't getting smaller. I'm saying moores law is broken. And I'm saying that Moore's original statement was already broken by 1975. And that the whole phrase means loads of different things that Moore never actually said, and the one of those which matters here is still true .

> If you ask MIT Professor Charles Leiserson, Moore’s Law has been over since at least 2016. That’s from the link. I largely agree. Colloquially it’s over after 2016. Any other interpretation is too pedantic imo.

How is anything other than joules per operation relevant in the context of this thread? That's the only variant that matters here.

(Well, dollars per operation, but assuming energy costs are fixed…)

Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped

#199
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About as useful as the carbon credits themselves

Curious if you could elaborate? It seems like the issue isn’t carbon credits, but the lack of a regulated level of carbon that would make them effective. Market incentives work best with dollar incentives, not virtue points.

Carbon credits are useless for the same reason that non-proportional fines are also useless; for the incredibly wealthy the cost of speeding is the cost of the ticket. Some nations do a proportional speeding fine based on income - but that still doesn't affect the 1-0.1% whose wealth is more asset than income based.

Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped

#200
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human Genome Project and everything derived from it. IIRC, that was originally proposed as a cancer research project: "A Turning Point in Cancer Research: Sequencing the Human Genome" - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.3945817 Even without that I'm not sure why you think that's a good point — it's very easy to find serendipitous examples in medicine in general, e.g. viragra which was initially a heart trea…

“We were just doing cancer research and … we accidentally found the cure for homosexuality" (The Onion)[1] [1] https://theonion.com/scientists-don-t-get-mad-but-we-acciden...

I mean I get this is a joke, but it's still homophobic at its core, imo. Why riff on the same on argument against homosexuality when it would've been much more humorous to "turn it around" and joke about finding a cure for heterosexuality and research indicating that homosexuality should be the de facto state.

Tho tbf when I've joked about that with str8 friends they get really upsetti spaghetti, yet somehow still can't link their spaghettiness to why I was offended when they said "just don't act gay" when I said I would love to see Egypt but didn't want to travel there.

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