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Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors

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Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors

#71

Post by shardling »

Xcelerate wrote: post #49

The title statement is almost meaningless. It would be better just to say "simulating reality takes a LONG time". My research is in molecular dynamics. I simulate systems up to 1 billion atoms on Kraken & Titan. HUGE approximations are made in simulating these systems, but depending on what exactly it is you're studying, these simulations still provide useful results. That is the key to all these studies: how well do…

>The very best simulations of reality that we can perform handle at most just a few H/He/C atoms.

On a deeper level, we still have trouble simulating even a single proton.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_gauge_theory

Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors

#73

Post by omarchowdhury »

mentos wrote: post #63

This assumes that the neuron is the level of granularity that we need to simulate? Is there any research on what other chemical/electrical interactions might be necessary to simulate the brain?

Yeah, you need to simulate an entire universe as well. ;)

Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors

#75

Post by [deleted] »

moocowduckquack wrote: post #65
jfoutz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, i called out water specifically and therefore i am an idiot. Mia Culpa. Best of luck with your simulation, i'm sure that individual atom model will work out great.

I don't know if you are an idiot, however you appear to have not even the slightest bit of technical understanding of the subject you are offering opinions on. I am not attempting to be insulting, I am attempting to point out to you that you need to go and learn a hell of a lot more about the sciences than you seem to know at the moment if you are going to have any sort of productive discussion about the technical as…

[deleted]

Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors

#76

Post by moocowduckquack »

IvyMike wrote: post #3

At 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.

When it escapes and rampages through the city, consuming the living brains of innocent bystanders.

Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors

#77

Post by Xcelerate »

shardling wrote: post #71
Xcelerate wrote: post #49

The title statement is almost meaningless. It would be better just to say "simulating reality takes a LONG time". My research is in molecular dynamics. I simulate systems up to 1 billion atoms on Kraken & Titan. HUGE approximations are made in simulating these systems, but depending on what exactly it is you're studying, these simulations still provide useful results. That is the key to all these studies: how well do…

>The very best simulations of reality that we can perform handle at most just a few H/He/C atoms. On a deeper level, we still have trouble simulating even a single proton. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_gauge_theory

That's true. However, unless I'm mistaken (my field is more chemistry-simulation than physics-simulation), the internal nature of the proton is not necessary for achieving chemical accuracy level results from something like FCIQMC, namely because the chemical properties of interest are the result of only the charge interactions of the protons/electrons as potential terms in the Schrodinger equation. I believe applying QMC to solve that equation for all charge-charge interactions (including electron correlation) is enough to reach essentially exact energy levels (in the limit of simulation time -> infinity) ... am I incorrect? I mean, there's probably some difference in the eleventh decimal place due to the lack of relativistic and radiative corrections.

Hmm. I need to research this some more.

Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors

#78

Post by JamesArgo »

dekhn wrote: post #56
Xcelerate wrote: post #49

The title statement is almost meaningless. It would be better just to say "simulating reality takes a LONG time". My research is in molecular dynamics. I simulate systems up to 1 billion atoms on Kraken & Titan. HUGE approximations are made in simulating these systems, but depending on what exactly it is you're studying, these simulations still provide useful results. That is the key to all these studies: how well do…

Generally, the people doing brain simulations like to claim that they can use a massively reduced representation (little more than a graph model that pushes signals around with some constants) and yet, somehow, the simulation is inherently capable of reproducing something complex about thought. I'm not sure how they get to this conclusion, but it's a massive reductionism. It would be nice if it were true- it would me…

When did reductionism become a dirty word?

Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors

#79

Post by [deleted] »

moocowduckquack wrote: post #70
dnautics wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common theme where I work is me making a vociferous criticism, being ignored, and the things I say coming true later. (this is not to say that all of the objections I make wind up being correct)

You didn't refuse the advances of Apollo by any chance?

[deleted]

Re: Simulating 1 second of real brain activity takes 40 minutes and 83K processors

#80

Post by Dylan16807 »

pmr_ wrote: post #54
Dylan16807 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you assume whatever you're testing moves around or communicates instead of constantly naval-gazing, I'd bet even crazy-alien intelligence can be seen to be intelligent. Sure there might be higher levels, but we're not talking about higher levels?

You were explicitly talking about testing sentience (which does not require "moves around" or "communicates"). Sentience is simply a concept we have come up with to differentiate organisms. It wouldn't seem surprising to me if something more evolved used a different concept more appropriate to their physiology or philosophy. Hence I think you need to be careful if we are about to apply our concepts to classify someth…

They might have a different standard of important but that has nothing to do with checking for sentience. If they're so advanced beyond that the original analogy breaks and while I might have that discussion at some point I don't think it fits here.

On the topic of sentience, I just think it's exceedingly unlikely for there to be an intelligent organism that does literally nothing with its intelligence. Some kind of self-aware rock. And on top of that the mechanism of the intelligence would have to be almost impossible to study or plug wires into to try to force it to communicate.

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