Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> I think I see what you mean, but it's as much a problem for the intact and
> normally functioning brain as it is for teleportation experiments, isn't it? For that
> matter, it's as much a problem for a computer that gets teleported around in the
> course of its calculations. If the teleportation time slices are of femtosecond
> duration, then there is nothing within a particular slice to mark it as part of the
> calculation 5464*2342. Yet a computer strobing in and out of existence like this,
> technical problems aside, will still come up with the right answer. Indeed, if the
> computer only materialised in the final femtosecond it would have the right answer
> and if a log were kept, evidence of how it arrived at the answer. Do you believe
> that there must be some super-computation information in each femtosecond slice
> that binds them all together?
A piece of paper with 12796688 on it has the right answer.
But it didn't computer it.
I don't have to believe that the end-state of the computation
is the result of a genuine computational process, if it
isn't underpinned by a genuine physical process.
> Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Mon Oct 30 2006 - 16:38:57 PST