On 13 Nov 2015, at 21:02, Brent Meeker wrote:
Here's an interesting essay by Scott that ends up with a somewhat
more technical explication of my idea that consciousness requires a
world or environment with which it interacts.
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1951
However, he doesn't notice that this also solves the problem of why
we don't worry about being simulated in the digits of pi and what it
means to be "physically instantiated".
The idea that we are simulated in the digit of Pi is based on a
confusion between computation and description of computation.
We can be simulated in virtue of true relations existing among numbers
or combinators, but we are not emulated by any description.
Physicists do have a problem in the very basic of computer science. We
can come back some day on this, as this confusion is common. I
criticized it the first time on this list when Wei Dai compared a UD
with a counting algorithm (equivalent to PI). Counting or enumerating
the digit of Pi is far from being Turing-complete. You don't get a
universal dovetailer from it.
I do agree with you that we need a reality. The question is do we need
a physical reality, and the point is that not only we don't need it,
but actually, we can't use it. If a primary physical reality exists,
it cannot work to associate a consciousness to a computation. The
arithmetical reality (or Turing equivalent) is not just enough: it
cannot be completed in any way which is not necessarily redundant.
Physicalism needs computationalism to be false, and so it is not
astonishing that he concludes that we are not machine(*). It is
coherent with the UDA and all that. But the evidences are more for
computationalism (a lot of evidences) and materialism (no evidence
known today, except an habit in using a theological assumption made by
Aristotle, and probably partially wired in our brain for obvious short
term evolutionary interest.
Bruno
(*) I deduce this from what you say. I will take a look at the blog
later.
A lot of good comments too.
Brent
--
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.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
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.
