Reacting, Fast and Slow


bits/min	billions	2,000
billion calculations/s	~100	a billion
embodiment	20 minutes	5 billion years

Later in the 1940’s, when I was doing my Ph.D. work, there was much talk of the brain as a computer and of the early digital computers that were just making the headlines as “electronic brains.” As an analogue computer man I felt strongly convinced that the brain, whatever it was, was not a digital computer. I didn’t think it was an analogue computer either in the conventional sense.

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Thanks!

book: The Atomic Human
twitter: @lawrennd
The Atomic Human pages Blue Marble (photograph) 367 , Apollo 11 202-210, Earhart, Amelia 200–205, Gilruth, Bob 190-192, National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) 163–168, atomic human, the 13, Colossus (computer) 76–79, 91, 103, 108, 124, 130, 142–143, 149, 173–176, 199, 231–232, 251, 264, 267, 290, 380, embodiment factor 13, 29, 35, 79, 87, 105, 197, 216-217, 249, 269, 353, 369, Braitenberg Vehicles 128-133, 143, 144, 146, 147-148, MacKay, Donald, Behind the Eye 268-270, 316, Blake, William Elohim Creating Adam 121, 217–18, human-analogue machine (HAMs) 343-347, 359-359, 365-368.
podcast: The Talking Machines
newspaper: Guardian Profile Page
blog: http://inverseprobability.com

References

Lawrence, N.D., 2024. The atomic human: Understanding ourselves in the age of AI. Allen Lane.

Lawrence, N.D., 2017. Living together: Mind and machine intelligence. arXiv.

Lorenz, K., 1977. Behind the mirror: A search for a natural history of human knowledge. Methuen & Co Ltd.

MacKay, D.M., 1991. Behind the eye. Basil Blackwell.

The Admiralty, 1945. The gunnery pocket book, b.r. 224/45.