Peter Jones writes:
> 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.
What about a computation distributed over a computer network? What about just
the latter part of the computation? Do you think the computation's experience
(such as it is) would be any different compared to the latter part of the computation
on a single computer?
Stathis Papaioannou
_________________________________________________________________
Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail.
http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Mon Oct 30 2006 - 17:34:16 PST