On Tue, 19 Jan 1999, Wei Dai wrote:
> A definition of when a physical system contains some information may not
> be necessary. If the measure of a conscious experience is related to the
> measure of the associated state information, then all we need is a measure
> on the set of all possible states. We can simply say that the universe is
> this measure, and any perceived physical systems are just illusions
> produced by our own minds. Similarly, if the measure of a conscious
> experience is related to the measure of the associated computation, then
> it would suffice to have a measure on the set of all possible
> computations.
I don't think that avoids the problem. Suppose you start off with
some kind of uniform measure on the space of computations. You then have
to consider that computation A can implement computation B. To find the
real measure you would have to take such secondary implementations into
account, perhaps along the line I suggested in one of my first posts to
this list. It is essentially the same problem to determine when one
computation implements another as it is to determine when a physical
system (which is like the first computation) implements one.
You could arbritrarily rule out secondary implementations, but
then you'd be stuck with a trivial uniform measure, with no mechanism for
Darwinian natural selection.
- - - - - - -
Jacques Mallah (jqm1584.domain.name.hidden)
Graduate Student / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
"I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
My URL:
http://pages.nyu.edu/~jqm1584/
Received on Wed Jan 20 1999 - 10:58:30 PST