Brent meeker writes (quoting Peter Jones, Quentin Anciaux and SP):
> >>Hi,
> >>
> >>Le Dimanche 20 Août 2006 05:17, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
> >>
> >>>Peter Jones writes (quoting SP):
> >>>
> >>>>>What about an inputless computer program, running deterministically
> >>>>>like a recording. Would that count as a program at all,
> >>>>
> >>>>It would be a trivial case.
> >>>
> >>>Trivial does not mean false.
> >>
> >>It seems to me that the set of inputless programs contains the set of programs
> >>which have inputs. Because a program which have inputs could be written as
> >>the following inputless program :
> >>
> >>|HARDCODED INPUT||CODE|
> >>
> >>The resulting program is input less but the "substructure" denominated CODE
> >>here is not inputless, it takes the hardcoded input.
> >>
> >>So in any case I don't see why inputless program should be "trivial case".
> >>
> >>Regards,
> >>Quentin
>
> I thought the question was not about computation, but whether a program was
> intelligent or conscious. I think that intelligence means being able to respond to a
> variety of differenet inputs. So above |CODE| might be intelligent but not the
> overall inputless program.
OK, I suppose you could say "I'm intelligent" but not "I + my environment are intelligent".
That still allows that an inputless program might contain intelligent beings, and you are left
with the problem of how to decide whether a physical system is implementing such a program
given that you can't talk to it.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Tue Aug 22 2006 - 09:28:13 PDT