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Re: Rampancy and Exponentiatial Growth
Posted By: thermoplyaeDate: 10/25/06 11:14 p.m.

In Response To: Rampancy and Exponentiatial Growth (Forrest of B.org)

: Unless some of the resources he is appropriating are extra coprocessors. I've
: always imagined Marathon's computer network as a massively parallel system
: in every way; banks of processors, memory and storage available for the
: use of any program in the network that needs them (perhaps with certain
: programs limiting other programs' access to these resources and so on). As
: Durandal grows, he would require more processing power and memory to run
: his more complex program at any decent speed, and possibly more storage to
: store all the new data he is acquiring.

: Imagine a program on our normal computers: it's a certain size on disk and
: needs such-and-such much RAM and processing power to run well. Newer
: versions usually require more of all of the above. Now imagine it can
: rewrite and update itself, getting fancier and fancier, requiring more and
: more resources with every new version of itself. Just as running a very
: resource-hungry program on your computer will slow down or otherwise
: interfere with the operation of all other programs running, so too would a
: self-growing program start to cause those same problems. And as space got
: more and more tight, the growing program would also start to suffer
: performance problems. If it could (and was intelligent self-aware of it's
: nature as a computer program), it would probably try to find access to
: better hardware so it could keep on improving itself without suffering
: from all these overhead limitations.

: That is rampancy.

: As this relates to exponential growth: I don't think anybody was talking
: about "space" as in physical size. Rather, it was meant that the
: program grows in it's system resource usage (memory, processing, storage)
: in a fashion best approximated by an exponential curve. Roughly every
: X-period-of-time it requires Y-percent more resources. What X and Y is are
: a mystery; the point is, rampant growth accelerates over time, somewhat
: slowly at first and then much faster later, "exploding" instead
: of just gradually creeping at a linear rate.

: That current programs seem to run at about the same rate on modern hardware
: as older programs run on their contemporary hardware is a pattern of
: exponential growth in our software, as hardware resources (as approximated
: by Moore's Law) follow an exponential growth pattern (roughly 100% growth
: every 18 months).

Memory and disk space are precisely what "space" refers to when you talk about rates of growth in computer science. And I did imagine that as a rampant AI consumed networks, it would also harness the processing power. I don't think that this entirely mitigates that limitation (though maybe they have the year 2400 equivalent of 1 GHz computers with 16 MB of RAM and disk space combined; can't rule that out).

And over the past two or three posts I've given a number of reasons why exponential growth probably is not what is actually going on. And ukimalefu already explained exponential growth to the board; his post was actually the reason that I jumped onto this thread.

Though if you were going for a strange sort of sarcasm in explaining it again, then I /did/ smile at the joke. :)

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesJ-M 4/2/05 1:37 p.m.
     Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issues *NM*J-M 4/2/05 1:37 p.m.
     Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesJ-M 4/2/05 1:38 p.m.
           Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesBob-B-Q 4/2/05 2:29 p.m.
     Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesduality 4/2/05 8:20 p.m.
           Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesJ-M 4/3/05 7:03 a.m.
     They also have a forced localityMrHen 4/3/05 8:52 a.m.
           Does seem that way.J-M 4/3/05 10:33 a.m.
                 Continuityhowekern 4/3/05 4:22 p.m.
                       Re: ContinuityJ-M 4/3/05 8:45 p.m.
                             Re: Continuityhowekern 4/5/05 3:31 p.m.
                                   Copied identitiesMrHen 4/5/05 6:44 p.m.
                                         Continuity againForrest of B.org 4/5/05 7:29 p.m.
           Re: They also have a forced localityChlazza 4/3/05 10:55 a.m.
                 Interesting.J-M 4/3/05 1:01 p.m.
                       Re: Interesting.Chlazza 4/3/05 2:45 p.m.
                             Re: Interesting.J-M 4/3/05 3:19 p.m.
                                   Copied peopleMrHen 4/3/05 5:37 p.m.
                             Re: Interesting.thermoplyae 4/3/05 6:45 p.m.
                                   Re: Interesting.J-M 4/3/05 8:49 p.m.
                                         At least twiceMrHen 4/4/05 5:34 a.m.
                                               Google just shows those two. *NM*MrHen 4/4/05 5:57 a.m.
                                         Re: Interesting.thermoplyae 4/6/05 11:41 a.m.
                       Re: Interesting.Chaemera 4/3/05 8:17 p.m.
                       modern AIsJosh M. 4/13/05 7:53 p.m.
                             daisy daisy.... *NM*duality 4/13/05 9:04 p.m.
                       Re: Interesting.Document 10/24/06 7:53 a.m.
                             copying neural networks?MrHen 10/24/06 4:45 p.m.
           Re: They also have a forced localityhowekern 4/5/05 4:03 p.m.
                 Re: They also have a forced localityblake37 4/5/05 4:25 p.m.
                 Yow... and I agree.MrHen 4/5/05 7:12 p.m.
                 Re: They also have a forced localityJ-M 4/6/05 1:56 a.m.
                 Re: They also have a forced localitySteve Levinson 4/6/05 7:44 a.m.
                       Re: They also have a forced localityJ-M 4/6/05 5:50 p.m.
                 Re: They also have a forced localityMrHen 10/24/06 5:54 p.m.
                       Re: They also have a forced localityForrest of B.org 10/24/06 6:29 p.m.
                             Where is Leela's last message?MrHen 10/25/06 5:01 a.m.
                             Re: They also have a forced localityDocument 10/25/06 9:50 a.m.
                                   they spelled it wrong... *NM*MrHen 10/25/06 10:18 a.m.
                       Re: They also have a forced localityDocument 10/24/06 8:23 p.m.
                             Re: They also have a forced localityukimalefu 10/24/06 8:53 p.m.
                                   Re: They also have a forced localitythermoplyae 10/24/06 10:49 p.m.
                                         what?MrHen 10/25/06 5:21 a.m.
                                               Re: what?thermoplyae 10/25/06 7:29 a.m.
                                                     misunderstandings... :PMrHen 10/25/06 8:45 a.m.
                                                           Re: misunderstandings... :PDocument 10/25/06 9:52 a.m.
                                                                 thanks! you rock...MrHen 10/25/06 10:19 a.m.
                                                           Re: misunderstandings... :Pthermoplyae 10/25/06 11:57 a.m.
                                                                 oh, got itMrHen 10/25/06 12:59 p.m.
                                                                       Re: oh, got itthermoplyae 10/25/06 1:26 p.m.
                                                                             #alephone, eh?MrHen 10/25/06 8:30 p.m.
                                                                                   Re: #alephone, eh?thermoplyae 10/25/06 11:17 p.m.
                                                                 Rampancy and Exponentiatial GrowthForrest of B.org 10/25/06 4:15 p.m.
                                                                       Re: Rampancy and Exponentiatial Growththermoplyae 10/25/06 11:14 p.m.
                             More numbersMrHen 10/25/06 5:18 a.m.
           AIs as "Ghosts in the machine"ForceMorph 4/8/05 6:16 p.m.
                 Re: AIs as "Ghosts in the machine"Forrest of B.org 4/8/05 8:05 p.m.
                       Shades of Mamoru Oshii... *NM*Bob-B-Q 4/9/05 5:56 a.m.
           Re: "a planetary sized network"Document 10/25/06 4:51 p.m.
     My likely-nonsense theoryhowekern 4/3/05 4:10 p.m.
           Re: My likely-nonsense theoryChaemera 4/3/05 8:28 p.m.
                 Re: My likely-nonsense theoryJ-M 4/3/05 8:45 p.m.
                       Durandal has you! *NM*ukimalefu 4/3/05 10:06 p.m.
                             Re: Durandal has you!J-M 4/3/05 10:18 p.m.
                       Re: My likely-nonsense theoryMrHen 4/4/05 5:47 a.m.
                             Re: My likely-nonsense theorySteve Levinson 4/4/05 12:19 p.m.
     Stages of Rampancy in Human PsychologyForrest of B.org 4/3/05 10:20 p.m.
           Re: Stages of Rampancy in Human PsychologyForrest of B.org 4/3/05 10:22 p.m.
                 Re: Stages of Rampancy in Human PsychologyMrHen 4/4/05 5:55 a.m.
                 Re: Stages of Rampancy in Human PsychologyDocument 11/1/06 9:31 a.m.
     Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesJ-M 4/6/05 5:55 p.m.
           Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesForrest of B.org 4/7/05 8:34 a.m.
                 Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesJ-M 4/7/05 4:37 p.m.
                       Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesForrest of B.org 4/7/05 5:10 p.m.
                             Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesJ-M 4/8/05 1:41 a.m.
                                   Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesSteve Levinson 4/8/05 8:29 a.m.
                                         Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesduality 4/11/05 1:57 p.m.
                                               Doesn't account for the world reset.MrHen 4/13/05 5:40 a.m.
                                                     Re: Doesn't account for the world reset.Andrew Nagy (mb) 4/13/05 10:48 a.m.
                                                           Re: Doesn't account for the world reset.howekern 4/13/05 4:39 p.m.
                                                                 Re: Doesn't account for the world reset.ukimalefu 4/14/05 12:52 p.m.
                                                                 Yeah, but that's boringMrHen 4/15/05 8:03 a.m.
                                   Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesForrest of B.org 4/11/05 3:11 p.m.
                                         Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesJ-M 4/11/05 3:42 p.m.
                                               Re: Cybertonics, AIs, and fundamental issuesDocument 10/24/06 8:49 a.m.
                                                     Re: Cybertonics, The Autonomy of an AIAlexZander 10/30/06 2:35 p.m.

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