-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Monday, 11 July 2011 1:16 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: COMP refutation GAME OVER
On 10 Jul 2011, at 09:37, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: > Hi Bruno et.al. > > Once again we have come to grief on the old conflation. > > (A) You speak of a universe _AS_ computation (described _as if_ on > some > abstract mega-turing machine) You confuse perhaps with Schmidhuber's position, or some digital physicist (DP). But as I have explained many times here that this position does not work. Computationalism or digital mechanism (DM) is the idea that "I" am a machine, and by the first person indeterminacy, and the way the laws of physics have to emerge from computations, the physical universe (nor the fundamental reality) cannot be described entirely by a computation. On the contrary it is a sum on an infinity of computations. If the universe is a computation, then "I" am computable, but then it cannot be a computation (by what I say above, it is not obvious). So with comp, or without comp, the physical universe is not a computation. With comp, the laws of nature are not computable, or have strong non computable components. DM -> ~DP DP -> DM, So DP -> ~DP, so ~DP. Bruno ========================================================== I'm sorry Bruno, but you are so intractably mired in your own presuppositions that you'll never get this. Clearly you have never been roughly and uncompromisingly educated by the natural world, as I have as an engineer. Consider the statement "I am machine". This is totally loaded with presupposition. Like agreeing on the meaning of the word "machine" has any bearing on the problem at hand. No amount of playing about with any words like 'machine' or 'computation' has any relevance to the problem. I choose to have nothing to do with any of it. I choose to presuppose nothing. This is an empirical matter. In the entire history of technology development, the artificial instantiation of a natural phenomenon, the actual natural phenomenon was retained. FIRE, WHEEL/TERRESTRIAL TRANSPORT, FLIGHT etc etc etc.... Except once ...In the artificial instantiation of COGNITION, the 100% chosen technique is to throw the physics away...replacing it with the physics (atoms) of a computer, yet the natural phenomenon is still expected. No amount of discussion about abstract meanings of words like "machine" and the logical conclusions reached in unproven, irrelevant presupposed domains of abstractions of physics changes that. Where it once may have been plausible that 'information' manipulation might be a useful abstraction in AGI, this is now gone. Empirically. This is because the EM fields are no longer epiphenomenal. They have an active role. Eliminate/replace them with noise like a computer and you eliminate cognition like computed flame is not flame. Anastassiou, C. A., Perin, R., Markram, H., & Koch, C. (2011). Ephaptic coupling of cortical neurons. Nature Neuroscience, 14(2), 217-223. Frohlich, F., & McCormick, D. A. (2010). Endogenous Electric Fields May Guide Neocortical Network Activity. NEURON, 67(1), 129-143. The physics of cognition itself is a little less obvious than the physics of flames and flight. This does not entail that it is any more negligible in artificial cognition than flight physics was to artificial flying. This new reality does not mean that an AGI cannot be computational! What it means is that you will never prove what can be replaced by computation without artificially building the physics of cognition and then seeing what can be computed without eliminating/degrading the cognition. A theory of combustion resulted from playing with combustion. Not the other way around. A theory of flight resulted from flying. Not the other way around. A theory of cognition and general intelligence will result from building artificial general intelligence, not the other way around. We now know what is going on in a brain to the point of being able to replicate it. Semiconductor chip feature sizes approach those of the brain's feature sizes (insofar as they are cognition-relevant). The game has changed because of empirical outcomes. The relative importance of the contributors to cognition have changed. In the last year. Such changes happen from time to time. I for one am really enthused. Colin -- 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?hl=en.
