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[Putnam]

Of course, consider that the human brain fits into a human head pretty neatly, and that's a damn good piece of hardware.

[Descan]

And considering how much smarter we are than chimpanzees with, what, 3? Or even <3 percent difference in genes...

The area of "potential intelligence" is most likely MUCH larger and MUCH more varied than "Humans, and every animal on Earth."

[Arx]

It's a ridiculously small difference. Less than 2%.

Of course, we're currently coming up on hardware size limitations. We can't actually make some things smaller any more because they're already on the single-digit nanometers scale.

[nogoodnames]

I've heard an interesting theory that a hyper-intelligent civilization would eventually collapse into an artificial black hole in order to achieve maximum computational density. A singularity singularity if you will.

I don't know if there's much scientific backing to that, but it does make a certain kind of sense. Although it all depends on information being preserved inside a black hole, which my limited knowledge of theoretical physics suggests is not the case.

[Putnam]

It's a confusing thing.

Oh, one of my favorite statistical anomalies: plugging in the mass of the observable universe into the black hole density equation gives you approximately the density of the observable universe (and thus the volume of said black hole would be approximately that of the observable universe).

[Arx]

I think the most recent verdict was that information is chaotically scrambled inside black holes. Also, I imagine that it would be near-impossible if not actually impossible to achieve any sort of order within the event horizon of the black hole, so computing would be impossible or near-impossible.

[Putnam]

I imagine nothing when it comes to stuff within the event horizon. That is beyond unknown, it's unknowable. Not in the "hurr durr man wasn't meant to know" way, I mean the laws of physics prevent us from knowing what goes on in there.

[Arx]

Well, yeah. That's why I don't think you could meaningfully achieve order.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Is there anyway of ripping a black hold open/ tearing a black hole apart to observe the particles that were trapped inside?

[Sergarr]

Is there anyway of ripping a black hold open/ tearing a black hole apart to observe the particles that were trapped inside?

Short of waiting until it evaporates due to Hawking radiation, no.

[Scoops Novel]

Bump

For the record, i wish that AI article dwelled more on the effects of bridging technologies to AI. If we take the approach of emulating the human brain, what happens to all the people who look more and more like wetware?

Does a better understanding of the brain worry you?

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Also, where does Hawking radiation come from?
Just pops in and out of existence is a tad silly for science, is there nothing that causes the pairs of particles that come in and out of existence?
IIRC Hawking radiation is when one particle gets sucked into the event horizon and the other just barely escapes, not allowing them to rejoin and poof back out of existence right?

[Gigaz]

Also, where does Hawking radiation come from?
Just pops in and out of existence is a tad silly for science, is there nothing that causes the pairs of particles that come in and out of existence?
IIRC Hawking radiation is when one particle gets sucked into the event horizon and the other just barely escapes, not allowing them to rejoin and poof back out of existence right?

Vacuum is filled with virtual particles which obey an energy/lifetime relation like E*t<hbar/2. So they spawn and after their lifetime, energy and impulse have to be returned. It is however possible that they spawn at the event horizon and after the particle lifetime, the Black Hole pays for the deficit and one of the virtual particles escapes to become a real particle.

[Frumple]

Does a better understanding of the brain worry you?

Depends on what you mean by "worry". Will it allow new means of abusing human beings? Almost certainly. Do I consider the potential negatives to outweigh the potential positives? Not even remotely.

It would be pretty difficult for the possible advances in neurology to cause more harm than good -- too many of humanity's problems are caused by not actually knowing what the zog our brainmeats are doing, and the potential benefits to cognitive enhancement are incredibly large. There's maybe some worries about what particularly corrupt individuals will try to do with that knowledge, but... hell, knowing more means knowing how to counter that, too. It's an apple with a gram of poison in it that also has instructions on curing that poison (and dozens of others that aren't in the apple) embedded inside.

... so the less clear answer would be, "No, not really."

[Scoops Novel]

It's not all or nothing. Making headway into how one bit of the brain works while mystified by others could mean that you can wreak harm with no effective counter.

Not a neuroscientist (or a republican).