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I don't see where I ever disputed that specialized hardware is better than general purpose hardware at the task for which it is specialized; in fact, I specifically made note of that. Is there a reason you think it refutes a part of the thesis I was presenting?

The claim under contention is that there's some root deficiency of the vNA at computing in general, that perhaps could be surpassed by some ingenious FP-inspired model. If the only "limit" or "inefficiency" of vNA is that it doesn't achieve ASIC level efficient on every task, that's not much of a criticism. Even applied "horribly" to hosting discussion forums, the vNA is light years beyond all other general hardware.

I was under the assumption that a more substantial criticism of vNA was being offered. But the above criticism makes no sense unless it were somehow economical to rearchitect a computer for every distinct problem you plan to work on.



I was disputing your claim that brains are less efficient than vNA based computers. My point is that for vast majority of tasks we face on a daily basis, our brains are vastly more efficient than our computers. Note that a brain is a general purpose, non vNA based hardware. My conclusion: we should try to build a brain-like hardware out of silicon, as soon as we learn enough about how brains work.




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