There is an assumed simplification tendency going on that a human brain could be represented as a string of bits. It's easy to assume but I think that a more correct way to put it would be that it could be approximated. Exactly how close the approximation could theoretically get is entirely unknown. Though something could be achieved and even different forms of consciousness even ones that may be superior and more efficient and structured better than biological ones are there for discovery and I believe that there are potentially many variations. There is a tendency to think of levels of consciousness but perhaps this is wrong there are just variants some of which have stronger properties than others but common denominators are there IOW there are certain required properties for something to be classified as conscious. Consciousness seems not to be a point but an n dimensional continuous function.
John From: Panu Horsmalahti [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2008 12:08 PM To: singularity@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [singularity] Re: Revised version of Jaron Lanier's thought experiment. If we assume 2x2x2 block of space floating somewhere, and would assign each element the value 1 if a single atom happens to be inside the subspace defined by the grid, and 0 if not. How many ways would there be to read this grid to create (2*2*2) = 8bits? The answer is 8! = 40 320. Lets then assume that a single atom can hold atleast 100 bits[1], there would be atleast 9 * 10^157 ways to read a single atom. This is just by calculating the different permutations, but we can also apply *any* mathematical calculation to our information reading algorithm. One would be the 'NOT' argument, which simply inverses our bits. This already doubles the amount of bits we can extract. If you take this further, we can read *all* different permutations of 100 bits from a single atom. For any string of bits, there exists at least one algorithm to calculate it from any input, since a single bit could be calculated into 10 if the bit is 0, and 11 if the bit is 1 or example. It must then be concluded that you can construct an algorithm/computer to read a static string of bits that defines any human state of consciousness (the string of bits could for example be calculated to match exactly those bits that would be in the memory of a computer that simulates a human brain) from pretty much any space or substrate. One opposition people have is that "most" of that complexity is actually in the algorithm itself, but that is irrelevant if it still creates consciousness. If we assume that our universe has some kind of blind physical law, that has as input the atoms/matter/energy in some space, and then searches through all the possible algorithms, it is bound to find atleast one that should create consciousness. It would be quite a miracle if this physical law would have a human bias, and would think like humans to only create consciousness when the computation is done in biological neurons. If you say that computers cannot be truly conscious, you're saying that the universe has some kind of magical human bias, which seems to be religious thinking to me. As I showed, some space can be interpreted as many different kinds of computation (actually a *massive* number), only our human perspective forces us to choose the interpretation that fits us. For example, if we create a computer that calculates bullet trajectories, we interpret it to do just that. But it can be interpreted 'in theory' to mean many other things, but we only care of the computation we designed it for. A small box of 3 atoms bouncing around can be interpreted to mean a massive number of different computations, in addition of simulation 3 atoms. As it is trivial to read a static string of bits to match some state of consciousness, some argue that it is not enough. They claim that a single state is not enough to create consciousness. However, to imagine a computer that not only creates the first string of bits in the consciousness computation, but also the second one (and possibly more ad infinitum) just makes the algorithm/computer more complex, but is not an argument against the thought experiment. 1. The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil _____ singularity | <http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now> Archives <http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/> | <http://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> Modify Your Subscription <http://www.listbox.com> ------------------------------------------- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=96140713-a54b2b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
