Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 01:54:13 10/02/01
Go up one level in this thread
On October 01, 2001 at 00:36:48, Robert Hyatt wrote: >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. You can't possibly be arguing that there is nothing that N (N>1) people can't do in less than 1/N the time that it takes one person. I was trying to find an obvious example. If you don't like that one, I'm sure there is another one. bruce
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