From: tonyg@kcbbs.gen.nz
Date: Tue Jan 08 2002 - 17:29:11 MST
> An ant has 250,000 neurons in it's brain, which
Well... http://www.lingolex.com/ants.htm ("Interesting facts about
ants") claims that ant brains are comprised of "about 250,000"
neurons, and that human brains possess around "10,000 million".
However, http://www.at-bristol.org.uk/Education/nesta/brain.htm
("Brain facts and information") claims that humans possess 100,000
million neurons, where an ant "has only 10,000".
Neither site seems particularly authoritative, although both claim to
be printing "facts".
(Aside: if an ant possesses a mere 10,000 neurons, perhaps a $100
robot vacuum cleaner is within range?)
> The real, useful, Intelligence Amplifier that we
> have now is search engines like Google, which
> allowed me to find the number of neurons in an
> ant brain in about 10 sec.
Order-of-magnitude differences... so while I agree that google
provides a lot of useful information, it also provides a lot of junk!
Compare this "external memory" to your *own* memory, which went
through very careful filtering as it was laid down. You trust your own
memory, because you collected all that information yourself. Extending
similar levels of trust to google is probably a mistake.
(But I *do* agree that google really does provide a usable and useful
intelligence amplifier, when read skeptically :-) )
Tony
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