Comment on Fast Minds and Slow Computers

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 06:03:27 GMT

C++ trades off compilation speed for abstractive power in an extremely inefficient and largely obsolete way. It isn't even all that powerful in terms of possible abstractions. At least relative to a serious language.

What do you have in mind for a serious language? Something new?

I think the advantage of C++ for a hyperfast thinker (and by the way my analysis was of a GHZ brain, not a THZ brain - the latter is even wierder) is the execution speed. You certainly could and would probably want to test some things with a scripting language, but 1khz computers are really really slow, even when massively parallel. You would be wanting every last cycle.

One other interesting way to make money - you could absolutely clean house in computer trading. You could think at the same speed as the simple algorithmic traders but apply the massive intelligence of a cortex to predict and exploit them. This is a whole realm humans can not enter.

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