Re: The implementation problem

From: Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 15:25:05 -0800

On Wed, Jan 20, 1999 at 01:54:06PM -0500, Jacques M Mallah wrote:
> 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.

Ok, this is a problem for the idea that the measure of a conscious
experience is related to the measure of the associated computation. But
that idea seems to have a more basic problem, which is what exactly is an
element of the set of all possible computations? I don't think this set
has been well defined, nor has the uniform measure on this set been
clearly specified.

But what about the idea that the measure of a conscious experience is
related to the measure of the associated state information? We can take
the set of all possible states to be the set of finite binary strings, and
the measure to be the universal a priori distribution. The problem you
mention does not apply here. There are no secondary implementations, and
Darwinian natural selection is already "embeded" in the measure.
Received on Thu Jan 21 1999 - 15:28:45 PST