On 27 March 2015 at 17:35, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 3/26/2015 7:16 PM, LizR wrote: > > On the subject of counterfactual correctness, isn't that the point of > Olimpia and Klara? My problem with counterfactual correctness is (probably > the same as Maudlin's?) -- how does the system *know* it's > counterfactually correct if it doesn't actually pass through any of the > "what-if" states? To put it another way, when you have a recording of the > conscious computational states being replayed, what difference could be > made by the presence (or absence) of all the extra bits that *would* deal > with counterfactual correctness if a different computation was being > replayed, but happen in this case not to be used? I can't see how this > could make any physical difference to the states being replayed (unless > counterfactual correctness introduces some nonphysical magic into the > system?) > > I see two possible answers. First, in a quantum world there is a > superposition of all those "counterfactual" states, so they are really > present, but only observable as different relative states. Of course this > already invokes QM and physics, rather than deriving them. But maybe it > can be shown that the infinite threads of the UD serve to test all the > counterfactual states. >
Quantum physics definitely makes a difference here, but I believe Bruno's argument assumes digital mechanism which is classical, so QM has to drop out of it, if anything? > > Or, secondly, although there is no physical difference in the sequence of > states in the replaying, consciousness is not physical and so could be > absent. This doesn't require that consciousness be magic. If it is the > abstract thing called "computation" then in the abstract it needs to > counterfactually correct to count as computation. > That appears to throw out the physical supervenience thesis, like the MGA. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
