Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!umd5!mimsy!aplcen!jhunix!ins_atge
From: ins_atge@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Thomas G Edwards)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: The future of AI
Message-ID: <6645@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 7 Jul 88 23:50:46 GMT
References: <8807051413.aa01556@note.note.nsf.gov>
Reply-To: ins_atge@jhunix.UUCP (Thomas G Edwards)
Organization: Johns Hopkins Univ. Computing Ctr.
Lines: 25

In article <8807051413.aa01556@note.note.nsf.gov> fbaube@NOTE.NSF.GOV (Fred Baube) writes:
>
>Thomas Edwards:
>>   Talks a little about Chaos
>
>Can the precipitating/determining events themselves be caused
>deterministically if they're operating at a quantum level ?
>Couldn't observable macro events be determined (chaotically)
>by probabilistic events ?

As far as quantum determinicy goes, I am not sure on the relevant points.
I believe the going hypothesis is that quantum events are deterministic,
yet unpredictable (perhaps chaos at a very small/fast level?)

But yessiree, very small quantum changes are just the kind of
nasty things that can drive chaos, and now that I've officially
hurt my head thinking about this, we can now safely say that
quantum events may play a nasty part in the stochastic selection
of whether a neuron fires or not, because the chemical transfers
across the synapse are probably at least slightly chaotic.

But remember, chaos does exists on computers...just try plotting the
Mandelbrot Set, Henon Attractor, or the Xnext=rx(1-x) equation.

-Thomas Edwards