Is Extrasense's Mathematical Proof Debunking Kurzweil Valid?

[Extropia]

Hello.

Ray Kurzweil says, in 'Singularity is Near' (I paraphrase slightly) "One cubic inch of nanotube circuitry, once fully developed, would perform 10^24 cps per second".

However, on the MindX forum, a person known as Extrasense has supposedly refuted this claim. ES posted:

Let us do a reality check on your numbers :)

Uncetainty principle:
dE*dT=h dE=h*10^12 = 6*10^-34 10^12 J =6*10^-22 J /per transistor per computation

E= dE*10^12=6*10^-22*10^12 = 6*10^-10 J/sec /per transistor per second

E_extro = 10^19*E = 6*10^9 J/sec = 6*10^9 watt /per 10^19 transistors

So, your inch size computer wil produce approximately as much of HEAT energy as all the electric power output of US!

The possibility you are missing is: the claims that you love so much are totally bogus.'

This would APPEAR to debunk Kurzweil, but I am no mathematician and so cannot tell if this is a genuine, or bogus, mathematical proof. I suspect it may be bogus because its poster (extrasense) has something of a bad reputation as a troll (google his name to see how many forums he has been ejected from for bad behaviour.

So, I was wondering if more qualified people than myself could proofread extrasense's maths-based evidence. Is it bogus or not?

 

[rbj]

it's funny, I'm working for a company that was founded by Kurzweil and still bears his name on the product. (Ray doesn't own or run any of it anymore, but the Koreans that do own the company retain Ray as some sort of strategic consultant.) anyway, Ray and Walt Disney will someday have something in common: their frozen, freshly (upon death) decapitated head in storage for some future civilization (like Futurama) to recover and make them alive again.

wonderful.

dunno whos numbers are better, but i thought this might be informative.

 

[setAI]

hey Ex- still trying to wade through the trolls at MindX? I see that extrasense is still there [makes sense considering he has been banned from every other forum on the internet]

LOL- him and his silly rants against nanotech and quantum computers- I see he is using his made-up 'math' to show how impossible everything is-

first he is still clueless as to the nature of the uncertainty principle- which tells us what kind of information we can get about a particle when it is measured- however any high school chemistry student knows that the bonds and interactions between atoms and molecules are based on the very certain shapes and properties of the electron clouds that those uncertain electrons form- all forms of computing including chemical and quantum computing rely on very predictable rules of chemical and force interactions that have nothing to do with measurements of classical particles-

also it's ironic that he posts these numbers about heat- when there is already an excellent article by MIT's Seth Lloyd right there at KurzweilAI.net that gives detailed hard science answers to what computational power the laws of physics allows for the "ultimate laptop" and what is practical with the manufacturing techniques we know we already have: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0238.html

it should be noted that extresense’s warnings about heat are quite curious- as there are a many different forms of material substrates which can be harnessed for both classical and quantum computation that can provide efficient and reliable input/output to temperatures far beyond the core of a star- very hot/very brief physical states have been produced and harnessed by human engineers for many applications for over half a century now- does he really think that molecular computing/ bio/dna computing/ quantum computing elements have the same material limits as IC technology? even so- just considering silicon semiconductors there are already many methods being devised to deal with heat [for example http://www.vxm.com/21R.30.html ] his arguments are similar to those used to argue against human flight or the sound barrier-

BTW- I noticed that there are still 'copy vs original' debates going on over there- I remember all those long hours years ago where several of us old-mindxers laid to rest [we thought forever] the idea that a copy could not be an original- simply because the medical science in recent years has proved definitively how every cell in the body/brain is continuously being replaced by very imprecise biological copy methods [and the atoms and sub-atomic particles in those cells is being replaced every few attoseconds]- and that if you believe that a copy of your mind is not you that you must mourn the passing of your predecessor’s soul every morning when you drop a deuce- the real you is now the poo-you- existing in Time means a person is an ensemble of lossy copies- ironically an 'upload' would be the closest to a true preservation of your current self into the future that you have ever experienced-

it's pretty crazy how much 'but what about the body and the environment!" fuzzy reasoning is posted over there as well- it is rather obvious that the only information that you get about your body and your world is whatever triggers your various sensory neurons and the only affect the world/body can have on the mind is only in how any physical factor can affect/change how your neurons are triggered/suppressed- therefore it is not necessary to deal with the body or the environment- only the EFFECT that the body/environment can have on the behavior of neural activity! it makes no sense that there are still those who argue about the body and the environment- the fact that our physical reality and body is only what our sensory systems perceive has even been pretty well covered in pop-culture for some time now! [remember Morpheus' 'desert of the real' scene with Neo in the Matrix?]- just an observation