Brent Meeker writes:
> >If you include the computer's
> > data in the program then it becomes an inputless system, a self-contained simulation. If
> > you include yourself, the rock and everything else that might interact with it in one system
> > you have a self-contained, inputless universe. Both the closed simulation and the universe
> > (in the absence of CI type quantum randomness) are at least as deterministic as what we
> > normally call a recording, despite all the conditionals, because it is rather more likely that I
> > will change a recording than that God will intervene to push rocks around or provide
> > computers with miraculous inputs.
>
> Right. So within this simulation you may say there are intelligent subsystems by
> making a somewhat arbitrary cut between subsystem and environment. This still seems
> different from a recording though. The recording is only of the paths actually
> taken, whereas looking at the program you can see other paths that could have been
> taken - just as you say the rock computes because you *could have* pushed it the
> other way.
In a deterministic universe, saying that things could have turned out differently had initial
conditions or physical laws been different is analogous to saying the sound coming out of the
speakers could have been different if the grooves on the record or the equalisation in the
preamp stage had been different.
> And in anycase there does seem to be quantum randomness.
There does, although the MWI is deterministic. I can't think of any good reason why true or
apparent quantum randomness should be necessary for intelligent behaviour or consciousness.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Thu Aug 24 2006 - 00:09:07 PDT