Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 21:36:48 09/30/01
Go up one level in this thread
On September 30, 2001 at 14:47:21, Bruce Moreland wrote: >On September 29, 2001 at 14:54:03, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On September 29, 2001 at 10:41:37, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote: > >>>Super-linear speedups are "probably" impossible but so far I did not see that >>>they are "provably" impossible. I would settle with "They are believed to be >>>impossible". >>> >>>Regards, >>>Miguel >> >> >>They simply _are_ impossible. Unless you believe in perpetual >>motion, infinite compression, a fire that will burn forever, etc. > >Take a human who can move a 200-pound box, but only by scraping it along the >ground. Compute the time it takes him to move 10 such boxes 100 yards. > >Assume that two humans can move a 200-pound box more easily. Can they move a >200-pound box more than twice as fast as one human? Would this violate laws >against perpetual motion? Of course not. It is perfectly valid to consider >working in parallel rather than working serially. The mechanics of the task >might change, resulting in much increased efficiency -- they can lift the box >off the ground. I think that after you think about this example, you will see the flaw. Lifting the box off the ground takes _more_ effort. So the two people are doing _more_ work in a given period of time than two people pushing two boxes at the same time. The ancient Egyptions found that dragging was better than lifting. :) > >Two workers cooperating to perform a task, do not *have* to go less than or >equal to the speed of two workers, each of whom does exactly half of a task that >can be fairly divided in two. > >There exists the opportunity for synergy. > >The argument that the above violates the prohibition against perpetual motion is >fallacious. > >bruce Not after you think about it. If two people work and each of them moves 5 blocks, then they do no more work than the 1 person did moving 10. But they did it in twice the time. If they _lift_ the block _and_ move it, they are doing _more_ work per unit of time. They should have moved the blocks faster one at a time, but they were taking it easy... A computer can't do that.
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