Re: on simply being an SAS

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed Dec 29 03:07:06 1999

Russell Standish wrote:

>> BM: Are you saying that you can survive with artificial neurons, but
>> not with artificial *digital* neurons?
>
>RS: You are probably being a little sloppy with the word digital
>here. However, if we are talking about my substitution process I
>mentioned above, then the neurons would most definitely have to be
>analogue.

Yes but there are two kinds of analogue devices. Those who are still
turing emulable and those who are not (at the relevant level).
It seems you agree with Penrose that there must be uncomputable
feature in our brain. These features would be not emulable at any
level.

>> To believe in comp, it is not necessary that neurons are Turing
>> emulable, only that there is a level such that the relevant working
>> of the neurons are turing emulable.
>
>And I'm saying that randomness is an essential component to the
>operation of the brain. Randomness is not Turing emulable at any
>level.

But Everett just showed us how to emulate randomness with UTMs.
It is enough to emulate solutions of schroedinger equation applied
to the observer (emulable itself by comp). This does not create
randomnes relatively to us, but it creates randomness relatively
to the simulated observers. You get the same with the computationalist
self-multiplication kind of indeterminacy.
You cannot get 3-randomness, but you can easily get 1-randomness, with
turing machine. My interpretation of Everett is that he makes
disappearing the need of 3-randomness in QM.

>Nevertheless, it may be possible for a Turing machine to "pass the
>Turing test" without genuine randomness. Its not clear to me whether
>this might lead to "zombies" as you call it.

I'm afraid it will.
Here your "non-computationalism" is a little worst than Penrose's one :-(
At least Penrose believes that not only consciousness need uncomputability
but even conscious behavior need it. So there is no Zombie in Penrose.
If you are correct, it would mean that from a 3-person point of view I can
survive teletransportation, but that from "your" point of view my digital
copy is a zombie, and then you can kill me!

By "not genuine randomness" do you mean the randomnes produced by
pseudo-random generator, or by the randomness due to self-multiplication
(i.e. the one of the MWI or comp) ?

Bruno

PS There is a beautiful paper in theoretical computer science which
shows indeed that some problem are soluble with UTM + Random Oracle, and
not soluble with any UTM + any Pseudo Random Oracle. (Kurtz, S. A., On
the Random Oracle Hypothesis, Information and control, 57:40-47).
But that does not change the fact that self-multiplication and the
1/3-distinction gives, in the comp realm, a phenomenology of "genuine"
randomnes.


 
Received on Wed Dec 29 1999 - 03:07:06 PST