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Comment by pixl97 | Hacker News Reader

It's a question of latency...

It takes you, what, seconds to type digits into a calculator?

But if you embedded a calculator into your brain and could put in and pull values out of it in microseconds how are you different from a math genius?

Same with millisecond access to Google earth, at some point smarts+speed of access is a system within itself.

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> But if you embedded a calculator into your brain and could put in and pull values out of it in microseconds how are you different from a math genius?

Tao, Perelman, Wiles etc. aren't math geniuses because they can multiply numbers fast (which is a super weird definition of "math genius" tbh). They're math geniuses because they answer really hard questions in creative and unexpected ways; ways that often open up entire new areas of mathematics.

I think you’re sidestepping the point here. The point is that the combo of these systems becomes one unit. One integrated system. That’s the new system to measure. Similarly, your prefrontal cortex without a hippocampus sucks. The combo of them (and other distinct parts of the brain that handle specific functions and have specific purposes that interact with other parts in a specific way) - that is what causes our specific type of intelligence to emerge. The brain as a whole is much more interesting and practical to measure.

Yeah this is a valid criticism of the Chinese Room (called the "Systems Counterargument")[1]. I think it's a weak-ish riposte in this context though, mainly because we have no real idea how our own brains work and how their parts causaly interact (other than handwavy "these neurons are firing in this area").

[1] https://iep.utm.edu/chinese-room-argument/#SH2a

I think the most likely case is that the properties of a system that leads to emergent behavior (part of complexity science) are very much present in the brain where the various components with a proper balance leads to the intelligence we have.

An interesting intelligence emerges from a colony of ants compared to one. An interesting intelligence emerges from the relations of the various parts of the brain. An interesting intelligence emerges from the combo of techniques that have led to GPT and other surprising AIs. Same with a human, to two humans collaborating, to tribes to companies to cities etc. And likely same by combining/integrating GPT-4 type of LLMs with other tools and with other specific purpose LLMs - a greater unit of significance will emerge. (The non-predictability of this with current science is what is kind of scary to me.)

>> Tao, Perelman, Wiles etc. aren't math geniuses because they can multiply numbers fast

You're getting stuck on semantics.

I expect Tao, Perelman, Wiles, etc. can process/handle/deal with numbers much more rapidly than I can.

Now imagine if these folks could do the same, except 10x or 100x or 1000x faster, without having to ever be bothered with things like sleep or food.

This may not be a good definition of a "Math Genius" but it is reasonable to think that all or most "Math Geniuses" possess this skill. Speed matters.

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