Kurzweil: For example, I point out that the complexity of the design of the brain is at least 100 million times simpler than it appears because the design is in the genome. Even including the genetic machinery that implements the genome, the compressed genome is only about 50 million bytes (which I analyze in the book), and that is a level of complexity we can handle.
Yes, Ray, and how much computing power will it take to explore a reasonable fraction of 2^(8*50,000,000) possibilities? Maybe by reverse-engineering what nature did, but how else? Previous discussion here.
Go read What is Thought? instead of wasting time with the Times on science... (Don't even think of looking at the comments there -- it will cost you 10 points of IQ.)
