gorilla:human::computer:?

Sorry about the format of the title. I guess the PCAT is still on my mind. Anyway, I was reading about how human brains are 3 times larger than gorilla brains in my cultural anthropology textbook. That seems pretty impressive. But if you consider the actual capabilities of a human being versus a gorilla, would you say we are imes closer, we gonly 3 times better? There must have been some point at which humans were just three times smarter than gorillas, but then we crossed some sort of line and even though our brains didn't get much bigger we have been able to achieve bigger and better things. Just think, the closest a gorilla can get to the moon is on the tallest tree in Africa. That is not nearly as close as humans got. We didn't just get three tot all the way there. This brings me to a toubling notion. If computers are really just mechanical brains (by the way computer in Chinese is literally translated as "digital brain"), how long before they reach that magical line? If you consider a human brain getting larger as just having more memory and being able to do computations faster, then computers are evolving faster than humans could ever dream of. If computers did cross that line, they would be able to manufacture the next generation of computers to be as technologically advanced as possible at the time. Thus each generation would get progressivly better until eventually all the materials on Earth are stripped bare to make more computers. Of course by then, the computers would be able to travel through space and time, eventually using up all the resources in the universe. What would be the final product of this computer evolution? Well, if you don't believe in a God, it would probably be the closest thing to it. If you do believe in a god, you don't have anything to worry about because he/she/it would probably have stopped the computers at some point (although I wouldn't kid yourself into thinking it definately would happen before they destroyed Earth). Sweet dreams.