I am a regular reader of both PZ Myers and /r/science. On those two sites, a heated debate has developed during the last week over Ray Kurzweil’s claims of the possibility of reverse engineering the human brain by 2030.
I’ll give you a quick history of the debate so far. It all started when Wired published an article titled “Reverse-Engineering of Human Brain Likely by 2030, Expert Predicts,” in which Ray Kurzweil predicts that the reverse engineering of the human brain will be possible by 2030. This article immediately produced controversy, and PZ Myers wasted no time in writing the article “Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain.” Kurzweil was quick to respond to that in “Ray Kurzweil Responds to ‘Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain’.” Myers followed with another, and maybe final response: “Kurzweil still doesn’t understand the brain.”
Finally a neurologist, Steven Novella, has joined the debate in “Myerz vs Kurzweil on Brain Complexity.” He does a good job of deescalating the debate, and has a similar stance to mine. Both Myers and Kurzweil don’t completely understand each other’s point of view. Myers is correct in saying that Kurzweil does not understand how the brain works. Kurzweil is also correct in saying that Myers doesn’t understand exponential growth of information technology. I also think that Myers has been too harsh on Kurzweil, who is not a the complete moron that Myers makes him out to be. Despite what either Myers or Kurzweil has to say, the reverse engineering of the brain is currently happening, and we can only wait and see what the people working on it come up with in the future. The future is hard to predict, and the only way to know for sure what is going to happen is to wait and see. The singularity may or may not be near.
Michael Shermer is the editor in chief of skeptic magazine. He gave this TED talk a few years ago, and it it worth revisiting.
If you don’t feel like watching the whole thing, fast forward to the 11:40 mark to catch the best part of the clip.
check it out….
It is summer-time here in Victoria, BC, and we are getting a pretty good batch of nice weather. That means it’s steak time. I really like steak, but I also really like science, so I am usually still thinking about science while eating steak.
There has been advice around that recommends warming up a steak to room temperature before cooking it. I have always subscribed to this advice, and I am a little bit embarrassed to say that I had never really give it much thought before. The concept makes sense. I like rare steak, and I wouldn’t want the interior of that steak to still be cold after I barely cooked it.
After a quick recall of heat transfer equations, I remembered that most heat transfer rates have a factor comprised of temperature differentials in them. An equation for heat transfer rate in conduction follows:
Disregard everything except for the T1 and T2 at the top. T1 – T2 is the temperature differential between the two materials. In this case it is the temperature of the BBQ and the meat. Let’s assume that the BBQ is a constant 300 degrees C. Meat straight from the fridge is around 2 degrees, and meat left out in a room would probably be around 15 degrees. Meat straight from the fridge would have a factor of 298, and meat left out in the room would have a factor of 285. Because cooking a steak doesn’t take very long, I don’t think that the difference between these two factors would make much of difference.
time to go test this….
I have always been interested in evolutionary algorithms. I didn’t realize that they’d be compromising my future employment though.
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