>
> [1: human in physical world, 2: AI robot in world, 3: human in VR, 4: AI
> in VR]
>
> Russell Standish In-Reply-To: <3783CE64.FBD9C413.domain.name.hidden> from "Hans
> Moravec" at Jul 7, 99 06:02:12 pm
> >> [ 1: human in physical world,
> >> 2: AI in physical world robot,
> >> 3: human in VR,
> >> 4: AI in VR ]
> > We have already discussed the concept that conciousness is a relative
> > concept. In your cases above, 1-3 would indeed be concious relative to
> > our own, but case 4 would not (if it is an entirely deterministic system
> > with no free will), and case 3 is arguable I suppose.
>
> Ah, but you can embed nondeterministic process in deterministic ones
> by taking all paths at each decision point. Any individual thread
> through the branching tree will seem (be) nondeterministic.
>
> And then later, I, outside, can interact with one of those threads,
> and listen in on the being discussing its surprising life experiences.
Exactly, but in this case your program is a simulation of a universe,
not a conscious entity in itself. Of course it may contain conscious
entities, just as the program "for (int i=0; ;i++) printf("%d\n",i);"
contains conscious entities.
>
> > and case 3 is arguable I suppose
>
> It seems a strange distinction to say someone's consciousness
> is somehow not there when they're jacked into a VR. How about
> if we forget about the VR, and just wall someone off from us,
> so they can't interact. Or send them away to a distant star.
> Are they then not conscious relative to us? Is there a
> pont in making this distinction? In the wall, star and VR case,
> we could make an effort and eventually reestablish communication.
> Wouldn't it be clearer to simply say they're "out of touch with us"
> rather than "they're not conscious relative to us"?
>
Sorry, I meant case 2, not 3. On my orginal posting, your
classification had scrolled off the screen.
>
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Dr. Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit,
University of NSW Phone 9385 6967
Sydney 2052 Fax 9385 7123
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
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Received on Wed Jul 07 1999 - 19:00:48 PDT