jacob_cannell comments on Exploitation and cooperation in ecology, government, business, and AI - Less Wrong

18 Post author: PhilGoetz 27 August 2010 02:27PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (43)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: PaulAlmond 29 August 2010 12:47:29AM *  0 points [-]

I don't think a really big computer would have to collapse into a black hole, if that is what you are saying. You could build an active support system into a large computer. For example, you could build it as a large sphere with circular tunnels running around inside it, with projectiles continually moving around inside the tunnels, kept away from the tunnel walls by a magnetic system, and moving much faster than orbital velocity. These projectiles would exert an outward force against the tunnel walls, through the magnetic system holding them in their trajectories around the tunnels, opposing gravitational collapse. You could then build it as large as you like - provided you are prepared to give up some small space to the active support system and are safe from power cuts.

Comment author: jacob_cannell 29 August 2010 02:50:46AM 0 points [-]

The general idea is that because of the speed of light limitation, a computer's maximum speed and communication efficiency is always inversely proportional to its size.

The ultimate computer is thus necessarily dense to the point of gravitational collapse. See seth lloyd's limits of computation paper for the details.

Any old hum-dum really big computer wouldn't have to collapse into a big hole - but any ultimate computer would have to. In fact, the size of the computer isn't even an issue. The ultimate configuration of any matter (in theory) for computation must have ultimately high density to maximum speed and minimize inter-component delay.

Comment author: PaulAlmond 29 August 2010 03:05:10AM 0 points [-]

What about the uncertainty principle as component size decreases?

Comment author: jacob_cannell 29 August 2010 03:31:13AM 0 points [-]

look up seth lloyd and on his wikipedia page the 1st link down there is "ultimate physical limits of computation"

the uncertainty principle limits the maximum information storage per gram of mass and the maximum computation rate in terms of bit ops per energy unit, he discusses all that.

However, the uncertainty principle is only really a limitation for classical computers. A quantum computer doesn't have that issue (he discusses classical only, an ultimate quantum computer would be enormously more powerful)