A revolutionary OS/Programming Idea

[Alaric B Snell]

Lynn H. Maxson wrote:
> Alaric B Snell wrote:
> "...
> ...but that's not necessarily a true statement ;-) If we, using 
> our knowledge of physics and chemistry, built a large enough 
> con (sic) Neumann computer and told it to model the trillions 
> of atoms within a brain, it might be sentient, unless 
> as-yet-undiscovered physical processes are at work."
> 
> Well, we were executing on the same wavelength until we 
> got to this point.  I guess I haven't been the same on this 
> subject since reading W. Ross Ashby's "Design for a Brain".  I 
> guess it comes down to asserting that you cannot program a 
> non-programmable process.  With a von Neumann 
> architecture, something with a pre-existing instruction set, 
> you cannot possibly emulate something not based on one.

Why not?

And do we actually know if the human brain can be described as something 
not based on an instruction set?

> We make a mistake when we equate even as an analog a 
> neural net with neurons.  We have no reason to believe that a 
> neuron plays anything other than a passive role, one of a 
> conduit only, with respect to sentience or intelligence.  It 
> certainly doesn't "store" anything.  As far as we know such 
> "storage" occurs in the connections where it continuously 
> recycles, i.e. it has only a dynamic state and never a static 
> one.

Hmmm, neurons do have long term state as well as short term state, but 
even the long term state is mutable so perhaps not 'static'. The 
synaptic weightings change slowly as the neuron 'learns', and this 
influences the chance of the neuron firing or not in a given situation - 
it's "behaviour".

> Come the 19th of this month (October) I will present "Opening 
> Open Source" at an OS/2 user conference in San Francisco.  

That sounds fun!

> I certainly avoid OO like 
> the plague, at least what currently passes for OO.

I'm interested in learning about more 'alternative' realisations of OO. 
Things I have alreaded studied are the generic function / multiple 
dispatch idea, which is very interesting since it lets you add methods 
to existing classes; you can add say, a "hashValue()" method to *all* 
classes without needing their source code by just defining it seperately 
on Object, String, List, etc. as well as leaving developers free to 
define it on their own classes, too.

I want to learn more about the system Haskell uses.

ABS