"XKCD" (2005-), a Web Comic by Illustrator Randall Munroe

[DanielK]

23 hours ago, DonRocks said:

Okay, I've read this interesting article. I'm also reading a book, "What If?" by Randall Munroe, subtitled "Serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions."

Comparing the human brain to a computer, Munroe says: "Humans, for example, are probably still far better at looking at a picture of a scene and guessing what just happened."

Any parent could look at this picture for five seconds, and figure out what most likely happened, whereas a computer, even the computers of tomorrow, might take a million-billion-trillion calculations to reach the same conclusion (granted, that might take less than five seconds, but you get what I mean):

It will be a century after my death when computers finally figure out that Brooks Robinson was the greatest defensive baseball player that ever lived, but I already know, just as surely as I know the sun will rise in the morning.

Munroe's webcomic, XKCD, is one of the best things on the Internet.