Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > Brent meeker writes: > > >>>>I don't think "intelligence" is meaningful without an environment with >>>>which it can interact. The same for computation: what distinguishes >>>>computation and noise is a context in which it interacts with its >>>>environment. >>> >>> >>>What about an intelligent, conscious being spending its time dreaming? >>> >>>Stathis Papaioannou >> >>You're hypothesizing an intelligent being and then asking me if it's >>intelligent?? > > > Is it a contradiction to hypothesise an intelligent being which only dreams? > > >>It a computatation only "dreams" then how could you know whether it was >>intelligence, or just noise? > > > We wouldn't know, but the computation itself would know if it were conscious, > creating its own observer. If we say that noise contains hidden information > that may be true in a trivial sense, but it's meaningless: information hidden > in > noise is not accessible to anyone and is no different to no information at > all. > But if the information hidden in noise is a conscious computation, then it > *is* > accessible to someone: itself, by definition. If you don't like this > conclusion > then you have to either reject computationalism (as John Searle does using > this argument) or impose ad hoc limitations on it, which amounts to the same > thing.
I'm considering rejecting the idea that a computation can be distinguished from noise by some internal characteristic of the computation. I don't think you can make the idea of "information hidden in noise" well defined. By Shannon's measure noise is information. Brent Meeker --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
