RE: consciousness based on information or computation?

From: Gilles HENRI <Gilles.Henri.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 15:11:00 +0100

>Schmidhuber suggests that there is just one program, as simple as possible,
>and the simples program generates all possible universes with their
>complement of consciousness or lack of it. So he and I agree that the fact
>that there is an awful lot of 'noise' does not matter.

James, the problem is not the amount of noise. The problem is how to
distinguish a noise from a signal. Once again it has no meaning without an
interpreter.
There is also an inconsistency with time. In Schmidhuber's view, time is
given by the ordering of outputs. But as you judiciously remark ( and in
Deutsch's point of view I suppose) time is an illusion. Macroscopic worlds
contain some structure that make them apparently related to other states
that we call past and future. But this information is stored in the state
itself. So the string in which this state would appear and its place in
this string is immaterial. The simplest program just enumerates all integer
numbers. If you can tell me which integer describes the existence of
consciousness or to the existence of anything like an electron or whatever
you want, I would be very grateful to you!
Cheers
Gilles
Received on Mon Feb 01 1999 - 06:14:36 PST