Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker
Population A million individuals to get evolution. This means a million 10 6
at any given time, not a million in all. On the low side, but
remember that the population used to be much smaller.
Number of years A million. Again, this is somewhat on the low side, but most 10 6
of evolution of the important brain features may have evolved fairly early.
Seconds per year Thirty million, approximately. 3 * 10 7
Instructions per Three hundred quadrillion, as calculated in the previous table. 3 * 10 17
brain per second
Total number of
instructions
processed to
simulate human
evolution
Instructions-persecond
needed to
simulate evolution
in a year
Target clock rate
Population * years of evolution * seconds per year *
instructions per brain per second = 3*3*10 (6+6+7+17) = 10 37
updates if again I round 3*3 up to 10. A mathematician
would use the name ten duodecillion for 10 37 .
Total number of instructions / seconds per year =
10 37 / (3*10 7 ) = 3 * 10^29 . Here I’m rounding 10/3 down to 3.
If there’s three clock ticks per machine instruction, we get
3 * 3 * 10 29 , which we round up to 10 30 , a tidy million
yottahertz, which could also be called a wattahertz.
10 37
3 * 10 29
10 30
Table: A One-Year Simulation of Human Evolution on a Wattahertz Machine
Why I Quit Teaching
I was tired of preparing new lectures and demos on difficult material, tired of
wrestling with the ever changing hardware and software, and eager to devote my few
remaining non-senile years to writing.
Freewill
Once the dust settles, what you did is what you wanted to do. This truism lies at the
core of the philosophy called existentialism: you are what you do.
Recovery-Group-Tinged Rap About God and Free Will
Once or twice a week I participate in a meeting of a support group devoted to helping
people change their destructive behaviors. One of the pleasant side-effects of this kind of
informal group therapy is that I get flashes of insight into the minds of people whom I might
otherwise never meet. Over and over I discover unexpected intricacies of emotion and
humor within strangers. Nobody is simple on the inside. It’s an impossibility. Every brain
is carrying out a class four computation.
And this is no surprise, really. For look inward at your flow of thought. It’s like that
cellular automaton rule depicted above. One thing leads to another. The glider-like thought
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