murthy@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Murthy Gandikota) (04/01/89)
It is the question we (I and another AI buff) asked ourselves. Our arguments were as follows: They are more or less contemporaries (in the evolutionary sense) so their brains have the same storage capacity (empty volume if you wish). Scarecrow, being a descendant of Indian culture, may know a great deal about nature and supernatural. His knowledge about birds, animals, plants, sun, moon, stars, etc. may be equivalent to that of a few enclyopedias. Feynman, being an excellent physicist, should possess atleast a 100 years of physics knowledge and more from his own cultural background. However, he could've traded some of his cultural knowledge for Physics (and thus maintaining the number of concepts in his brain at constant). Assuming, the hardwired concepts in their brains don't differ by very much, we kinda agreed that Scarecrow and Feynman should've the number of concepts at same order. An interesting outcome of our conversation is that: "Brains have to forget things for their own good." (Sounds like a good excuse for my optimization course :-) Any comments are welcome. [For the unknowing, Scarecrow is a native Indian of North America who shot into public fame last summer during the drought because of his ability to cause rain by dancing and prayer. Feynman is a Physicist from Cal Tech, and also a Nobel Laureate] --murthy -- "What can the fiery sun do to a passing rain cloud, except to decorate it with a silver lining?" Surface mail: 65 E.18th Ave # A, Columbus, OH-43201; Tel: (614)297-7951