On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 4:29 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> > > On 8/8/2019 2:05 PM, Jason Resch wrote: > > Quantum computers can emulate any classical computation. If a brain >> emulated on a quantum computer answers "no" when asked the question "are >> you conscious?" while the same brain emulated on a Pentium III processor >> answers "yes" when asked the same question, then you have a violation of >> the Church-Turing thesis. >> >> > The Church-Turing thesis doesn't show that a computer must be ignorant of > everything about it. > Because any program can be run as part of an emulation of some particular hardware implementation running that program, no program can be implemented that can make a certain determination about its ultimate computing substrate. This is exploited to run emulators <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console_emulator> of different gaming hardware, or virtual machines <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine>. This is a direct consequence of any Turing Machine being able to simulated any other. If a program's behavior would branch differently based on its ultimate computing substrate, you could use this as a routine to determine the underlying computing substrate, and it would make it impossible for one Turing machine to simulate that other one. > Have you not noticed that you can get both "yes" and "no" by polling human > philosophers. What do you conclude from that? > Different brains. > > This is a program that can determine something about its underlying >> hardware (whether its a classical or quantum computer). If instead, you >> hold that both emulations answer "yes", then you have a violation of the >> anti-zombie >> principle >> <https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kYAuNJX2ecH2uFqZ9/the-generalized-anti-zombie-principle>. >> Either consequence is distasteful to me. >> >> >> If the quantum computer didn't decohere to a quasi-classcial mixture it >> would answer "Yes and no." (to every question). >> > > I am assuming in this example that the brain emulation is deterministic > (no superpositions need be used as inputs). > > > I don't understand the relevance of that remark. Any pure input can be > expressed as a superposition. > What I mean is that the qubits are have defined values, as either 1s or 0s, at the start of the brain emulation. Such that the entire computation is deterministic. Jason -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUj6K6aMDfwOKj-%2Bwx-G%2BdtKMAbExzfuduR2dxyVXVa_%3Dw%40mail.gmail.com.
