Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> Russell Standish writes:
>
> > > Is there any reason to believe that we would lose consciousness, or notice
> > > that anything strange had happened at all, if most or all of the parallel branches
> > > in the multiverse suddenly vanished?
> > >
> >
> > I think this question is ill-posed, but I'll try to answer another
> > question that may have some bearing on what your trying to get at.
>
> OK, the question is ill-posed if we jump ahead to deciding that the consciousness
> of a computation consists in its status as a mathematical object in Platonia, because
> it isn't really possible even in theory that some part of Platonia did not exist.
It is very possible that Platonism is false.
> > The Game of Life is known to be Turing complete. However, I do not
> > think any arrangement of dots in GoL could be conscious. Rather there
> > is an arrangement that implements a universal dovetailer. The UD is
> > quite possibly enough to emulate the full Multiverse (this is sort of where
> > Bruno's partail results are pointing), which we know contain conscious
> > processes.
>
> That's putting it inversely compared to my (naive) understanding of how the UD works.
> I would have said
> (a) some programs are associated with consciousness
> (b) the UD emulates all programs
> (c) hence, the UD emulates all the conscious programs
>
> In particular, I would have said that some sequence of frames in GoL is associated with
> a particular consciousness that can interact with the universe providing the substrate of
> its implementation, because we can observe the patterns, maybe even link them to real
> world events.
That is a strange passage. Are you saying that he links woudl
be
a) causal
b) coincidental
c) there is no difference between a) and b).
> This does not necessarily mean that the consciousness is caused by or
> supervenes on the pattern of dots, any more that the number 3 is caused by or supervenes
> on a collection of 3 objects. If anything, it could be the other way around: the GoL pattern
> supervenes on, or is isomorphic with, the consciousness which resides in Platonia.
????
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Received on Fri Aug 25 2006 - 11:11:40 PDT