Recently, we talked about how computers win when the rules are fixed, and how humans are better, the more chaotic and flexible the rules are.

So, why is this? M mentioned that as humans, we have a ‘ridiculously powerful feature extraction system that is much more powerful and vastly parallel than any computer’. I’m sure some of this is because we spend years upon years training our brains to be able to recognize a dog from a blueberry muffin. But some of it is probably in the ‘design’.

What most people probably don’t know about computers is that the reason that the chips can be so fast is because of insulation between parts. It’s like how you add brakes to a car so that it can go faster. If you can insulate different parts of a chip from each other, insulate different parts of a computer from each other, using some kind of defined language to communicate between, you can spend all your time independently making each part faster and more efficient. Over (not even that much time), your computers will get (much) faster and faster. So much faster, that they start to overwhelm other designs.

This is similar to how my hard drive (10s of MB/s) is now faster than the CPU on our old 286 (10MHz)[1].

Recent generations of CPUs are designed to be multi-layered, they might have some single digit number of layers of ‘wires’ and ‘transistors'[2], and each of these layers are specifically designed to reduce cross-talk, to be as insulated as they can be from each other.

Contrast this with the brain, which while only running at about 1kHz (vs multiple GHz of CPUs), has massively interconnected neurons, with connections running in all directions, connecting to each other in all kinds of non-binary ways. More complex, not insulated at all[3], chaotic, wonderful, and delightful.

Note: The title refers to how biology is very good at making limbs which bend back and forth, while machines are good at spinning motors.

[1]Yes, I know it’s not an exact comparison, but it’s fun to do anyway.

[2]This is correct enough for this conversation.

[3]Synesthesia is my canonical example.