Re: [oc] Beyond Transmeta...

[Lars Segerlund <lars.segerlund@comsys.se>]

  Hi again !

> 
>>  However the peanut thingy seems to be correct, I ate two peanuts, and
>>my brain continued to work for two more hours ! ( seriously, this info
>>is plain wrong ).
>> 
> 
> Errr... What are the chances that your boss is reading this message and now
> knows what the bottom of your pay scale is? ;)
> 

  Actually I don't get paid :-( .... ( seriously ! ) ... but the 
situation would take some time to explain, ( atleast to me ).
  ( It actually took me a while to figure out what you meant by this :-) ).

> 
> I seem to recall, could be incorrectly, that the signal let's say from your
> finger
> to your spinal column travels at about 200 miles per hour or about 90m/s.
> I don't know what the equivalent of a precharge time is for the axon and
> ganglion
> are but let's assume they halve the performance.
 >

  This is correct while the signal is travelling in a single nerve cell, 
however the propagation at the interfaces between cell's are limited by 
ordinary diffusion, which slows it down a bit ( quite a lot ).

> 
> A baseball batter can hit a 100 miles per hour pitch. Although some
> of the calculation for trajectory and swing can begin at wind-up the
> critical
> portion of the information for trajectory is likely not available until
> halfway
> to the plate. The batter has to commit
> to the swing when the ball is near the halfway point too. I do not know
> if actual measurements of brain activity was measured under these
> circumstances
> but I venture to guess that the final trajectory computations and swing
> corrections
> occur within 2 meters of flight time at mid point between the pitcher and
> batter.
> The 2 meters would also be close to the maximum signal path from the eyes
> through the brain and down the spinal column. This would indicate that the
> signal
> cannot bounce around too much in the brain. Enough time for an in-and-out
> and no time for any "talk" (thought).
>

  I think the batter hit's where he expect's the ball to be, and I am 
not to sure that not the visual cortext can bypass to ( the little 
thingi in the back, I don't know its brittish name ) in order to get the 
batting done. Also I don't think the batter think, I think he is 
reacting by using a trained curve fitting algorith.

> I would guess that the 100Hz statement above is much lower than an actual
> measurement.  The ear can hear at 20KHz and the brain can signal process
> this
> to determine the location of the sound. But your cognitive portion of these
> calculations is unaware of the finer details of the calculation.
> 

  Actually the brain doesn't signal process at 20 kHz, the ear does a 
fft ( by it's construction ), and the brain matches the signal processed 
data against a template, also no 'thinking' involved.
> 
>>  however it is good at hiding it's own fallancies.
> 
> 
> At least the brain can imagine that it is hiding it's own fallacies.
> 

  Not so, my brain certainly has no such alleged fallancies ! ;-)
  Seriously, it would be interesting to know how much thought that went 
into different matters, and how much pattern matching and so on the 
brains does.

> Jim Dempsey
> 
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