I've signed today and can't stop posting... I think I found THE most interesting forum and people I can relate to, here.
First off, I'd like to say I agree wholeheartedly with MichaelAnissimov : if you want to be more intelligent, the simplest way is to get more education, that's just plain obvious... except today people want it all without making any effort. I never did drugs (and most probably never will) but I do like wine (since I'm french and born in Bordeaux) and I know all too well the effects of alcool on intelligence. Still, to me, being lovestruck remains the worst possible experience. I remember once wasting an entire week (maybe more) agonising on a girl. She was fine, but we had nothing more than a series of one-nighters anyway. After she left for the Ivory Coast, I came to realize once more how being in love had temporarilly changed my IQ from a real number to a complex one... with only a imaginary part (it was probably -300.i )
But come one ! What's the point of being immortal if you can't have some entertainment ? I know I'm boring to most people, and I also know I wouldn't want to be boring for the next million years. Plus, that would entail not getting laid for a million year. Damn !
About fasting : I'm doing it, sort of, but not on purpose. Because I like my work too much, I skip lunch almost every day (exception : the days I go fencing). Fencing + one meal a day means I weigh 60 kg for 1m75... and it's all muscle. I haven't been to the doctor in years except for yearly mandatory check-ups (an obligation for workers in France).
I didn't notice my mind getting any faster by not eating, but I certainly noticed how "slow" (mentally) I was after a plentyful meal. Everybody feels that, a sleepy-headed daze when you can't concentrate on your work, and which takes hours to subside.
Fasting is actually considered by scientists as potentially extending life. It would seem some of the animals with the longest life spans (like turtles) don't eat that much. They also don't have much sex, but I hope this isn't related !
On a side note : I am among those people who almost never dream. I have about 2 or 3 dreams a year. When I sleep, nothing goes through my "mind". I still don't know how that ties in with intelligence, but I do know it could be genetic : all the males in my family don't dream either.
About animals reaching human-like intelligence : Dfowler, don't you think there's already enough madness on Earth with mankind ? Why would you want to add animals ? They'd be waging war on us before you can spell "zoo" ! Ok... maybe I'm stretching it... and maybe not. But I'll bump QJones' reply : the sharks in Deep Blue Sea would make you think twice before attempting to make animals smarter.
Imagine this : Legions of killer hamsters ! Commando lab-mice planning the escape of their kin from the dreadful extermination camps known as "cosmetics labs" ! Fish avoiding the nets and planting mines under the fishmen boats ! Horses realizing we've been exploiting them for the last 2000 years or so ! Cattle stampeding over the cow-boys and demanding that the UN hand over all butchers ! Highly-deadly venomous amazonian frogs conducting stealth assassinations worldwide ! Swimming on the beaches considered violation of territory by the fish !
What if the animals demanded compensation for us destroying their natural habitat ? We'd be doomed to recession !!!
OK, I'll stop there
Back to enhancing human intelligence : I used to think you could "overclock" the brain or increase its size, but since I've learned AI and done research in that field I know there isn't much room for improvement, especially if you intend to keep a (mostly) biological brain. First of all, neurons have no "clock", they are asynchronous devices. Second, if you increase the number of neurons, access time suffers. You'd gain larger memory, but you'd be slower to react.
Slower reaction would be very perceptible when you think, more than when you react, because thinking is a recursive "brain-task" involving a series of accesses.
For all my work (most of it has to do with designing artificial neuron models and implementing them) I don't know how you could REALLY increase the brain's speed and capacity. I think it may be better to look at other ways of getting more intelligent.
For instance, MichaelAnissimov has suggested using google as often as possible (guess how I found about you guys ?). What if you could have a link between your brain and a massive, non-neural database with advanced search engine technology ?
Everytime you come across something unexpected, you could learn about it. It would be great, and something I definitely want someday soon.
The brain has limited capacity. When I don't write C for a month, I loose my edge. I spend a lot of time "readapting" to stuff I alreay know everythime I start a new project. I've "re-learned" some stuff over 10 times already, and every time it "pushed away" some other knowledge. It's just like the caches in a PC : speed up the access to what you need at a given moment.
So maybe improving the brains also means improving how long it takes to get reacquainted with knowledge you already knew.
After all, if you consider we are computer-like being, then you must take into consideration all three essential elements that allow computing and have the most direct impact on performance :
- Memory size
- Data transfer capacity
- Processing speed
One of my plans, if I ever manage to turn my brain into a collection of artificial neurons, is to get the neuroglia out of the way, compact the brain to make it more shock-resistant and fill the skull space I gained with all sorts of mass-storage devices and "helper" processors. OK, and some big-ass EMI shielding all over the skull so your damned cell-phone won't cause a hard-reset !
Jean
