A program could be 'free' of it's own operation if it were free to change itself. The changes would result out of the operation making such changes. All a brain is, fundamentally, much like a computer, is a physical system bound by cause and effect. There is no altering of results beyond the processes from which they were derived. Nothing particularly surprising about the fact, it's disembodied decision making that doesn't make sense.
If you want to become a better person (Smarter, Stronger, More Compassionate, More Understanding, fill in your own desire here) then I hope you believe in free will. I don't, but I do these things nevertheless as a result of being fortunate enough to have a brain with a network structure that gravitates to such a function.
If you believe that all intelligence and ability is static I don't, but I understand the misconception.
Results can't be predicted, that's why they are computed. If the resulting output could be predicted without the intermediate processing, what purpose would the whole 'processing' function serve?
Results can be estimated, much like what is being done in this case, but in neither case is there any form of 'supercausal' interference in the operation of the architecture.
How does this eliminate what never existed in the first place? To put this in programming terms, both the generation and the output of the result are side effects of the program. How can a program be 'free' of it's own operation?
Actually, the very reasons you listed may very well be why we're at the level of practical technology available to us today. Scientists, and surprisingly, even the government, are aware of the lack of merit space travel technologies have. Wasting massive amounts of public funding on 'space habitats' is probably the worst attempt at 'some SciFi dream'. NASA does important work, unfortunately manned space travel and the whole 'let's go to the moon again' fiasco isn't in this category.
I suspect the conclusion to this will be massive parallelization with serial programming.
Core logic will use a single thread. Core logic rarely requires more than one thread. The remaining processors will be used to perform parallel tasks with trivial implementation.
Games for example will be single threaded to the programmer, but will use vast parallelization in the compiler for ray tracing / illumination, AI, physics and other tasks that can 'parallelize' themselves.
I recall a DARPA paper that mentioned the next generation of this arm in 2011 is expected to have proprioception. This is perhaps the biggest setback in the technology. Without proprioception you must continuously focus on the position of your arm and fingers, making casual tasks such as typing, as we know it, impossible.
Yes, that's exactly what's going to happen, we will transmit visual information with billions of robots instead of stereoscopic video. Forget reading books, have your billions of robots assemble into textual information instead.
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Results can't be predicted, that's why they are computed. If the resulting output could be predicted without the intermediate processing, what purpose would the whole 'processing' function serve? Results can be estimated, much like what is being done in this case, but in neither case is there any form of 'supercausal' interference in the operation of the architecture.
How does this eliminate what never existed in the first place? To put this in programming terms, both the generation and the output of the result are side effects of the program. How can a program be 'free' of it's own operation?
Actually, the very reasons you listed may very well be why we're at the level of practical technology available to us today. Scientists, and surprisingly, even the government, are aware of the lack of merit space travel technologies have. Wasting massive amounts of public funding on 'space habitats' is probably the worst attempt at 'some SciFi dream'. NASA does important work, unfortunately manned space travel and the whole 'let's go to the moon again' fiasco isn't in this category.
I suspect the conclusion to this will be massive parallelization with serial programming. Core logic will use a single thread. Core logic rarely requires more than one thread. The remaining processors will be used to perform parallel tasks with trivial implementation. Games for example will be single threaded to the programmer, but will use vast parallelization in the compiler for ray tracing / illumination, AI, physics and other tasks that can 'parallelize' themselves.
But it would be vulnerable to terrorists placing pennies on the track. America would have to start a war on money. Oh, wait...
I recall a DARPA paper that mentioned the next generation of this arm in 2011 is expected to have proprioception. This is perhaps the biggest setback in the technology. Without proprioception you must continuously focus on the position of your arm and fingers, making casual tasks such as typing, as we know it, impossible.
Yes, that's exactly what's going to happen, we will transmit visual information with billions of robots instead of stereoscopic video. Forget reading books, have your billions of robots assemble into textual information instead.