[CLIP]
> We may be uncomfortable with the idea of spider intelligence. After
> all, with a brain no bigger than a pinhead, a spider like Portia is
> supposed to follow rigid, simple behavior patterns. There's no much
> room in there for thinking. But from its deadly skill at mimicry to its
> elaborate attack strategies, Portia is one of the most behaviorally
> complex predators in the animal kingdom."
Hmm... A pinhead-brain can hold a LOT of neurons. At least 100,000, if
my physical intuition doesn't fail me completely. At that rate, it
should have enough processing power to outdo any extant single-processor
supercomputer. [I won't speculate on the hypercube machines. In a 1994/5
Scientific American, it was documented that a image-processing program
running on one of those machines learned to see more effectively
over 3 hours: WITHOUT ANY EXPLICIT LEARNING CODE!!!]
I'm willing to entertain computer intelligence. Portia has a huge edge
over the computers, so spide intelligence is hardly disturbing.
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
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/ Kenneth Boyd
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