Re: [colorforth] How is colorForth different from other Forths?

[Nick Maroudas <alice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Samuel A. Falvo II wrote:

> On Thursday 22 January 2004 04:13 am, Frיdיric DUBOIS wrote:
> > Well, no. Many species have increased or decreased their sizes over
> > the time; therefore the size of their brains as also varied.
> > The intelligence of an animal has few to do with the size of it's
> > brain. I heard that the brain/body size ratio is a better indicator.
> > Still, it does not explain variations of IQ within one species.
> > Probably a networking issue... :)
>
> The human species is a great example.We know that Neanderthal man was
> slightly larger than we were, but also had a markedly larger skull.One
> can surmise from this that they actually had superior intelligence to
> us.
>
> What enabled cromagnon to outlive them?The one thing they *didn't* have
> was a well-formed vocal box, while cromagnons did.Thus, scientists
> believe that it was the gift of *speech* that enabled cromagnons to
> express a larger degree of ideas and concepts than the neanderthals
> could.
>
> > The word 'evolution' is somewhat misleading because it is in the
> > semantic field of 'progres'. The process of evolution as described in
> > the modern theory of Darwin is the constant adaptation of animals to
> > the environment thru the natural selection.
>
> Yes, and complexity breeds complexity.A single amoeba holds little
> chance against a multi-cellular life form (yes, I'm familiar with
> Amoebic Dissentary, but that's caused by LOTS of amoebas running around,
> not one).One needs either lots and lots of amoebas (the embedded
> computing case), something fundamentally *different* (e.g., viruses;
> dataflow processors, hardware neural nets, or traditional [perhaps even
> slow] CPUs with good vector processing capabilities [see Cray X1 CPU for
> instance] are good examples), or additional complexity (multicellular
> organization, intelligence, etc.; Chuck's 25X, CPUs with superscalar
> architectures and at least 4 stages per pipeline) to be able to compete
> for resources successfully.
>
> --
> Samuel A. Falvo II
>
>

 Dear Samuel

 Agreed that "complexity breeds complexity" but, like Frederic, I think we
should be careful to distinguish between neurone count and intelligence,
between adaptation as survival and adaptation as progress.  CF seems to me
an example of progress by elimination.  It  is like the light, open sports car
that the British used to make and Mazda has lately revived with a few
modern conveniences.  Some other forths are like a doubledecker tourbus.
Either vehicle can take you for a scenic drive round the corniche - but it
will be a different experience.  In the light sports car you will be
exposed to the elements so, as Chuck says - be careful.


  Nick


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