On Sun, Sep 8, 2024 at 7:10 PM Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote:
> *> Most of the complexity of a billiard ball is accidental anyway.* *Even if you ignore the internal chemistry of a billiard ball a mathematical sphere is only an approximation of a billiard ball. It would take very little information to perfectly describe the shape of a sphere, but it would take vastly more information to perfectly describe the shape of a physical billiard ball. And as I said before, simulated physical objects are simpler than real physical objects. Mathematics is the language of reality but I've never heard of a description of an object being more complex than the object itself. * > * > The idea is that if consciousness is a computational thing * *I Think it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently, and the argument I gave in the above does not apply to consciousness because it is not a physical object, it is not even a noun, it is an adjective. Intelligence is the way atoms behave when they are arranged in ways that can produce the same results that a Turing Machine can. And consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently.* *> (ie) mathematical),* *No. Mathematics can describe computation, but it is not computation. That’s why the semiconductor industry exists, software alone is not sufficient, in fact, software alone can’t do anything. If you actually want to DO something, if you want something to change over an interval of time, then matter is required. That's why the information in a book can't do anything if it's just sitting on a shelf, that information can only cause something to change if a person or, as we've seen very recently, an AI, reads it. And both the person and the AI are made of atoms. And atoms are physical. * *Computation involves the manipulation of information, and the minimum amount of energy needed to perform a calculation is greater than zero. Also, the amount of information that you can stuff into a volume of space is finite, if there is too much information then the volume turns into a Black Hole where the information, if it still even exists, is inaccessible. So information is physical and computation is a physical process. * *> **then phenomena (ie physics) is entirely due to random splitting* *Schrodinger's wave function is NOT random, it is 100% deterministic. And if you wanted to sum up Hugh Everett's Many Worlds theory in the fewest words possible it would simply be "everything follows Schrodinger's wave function, even the entire universe". So to a mind vast enough to comprehend the entire Universal Wave Function nothing would be random. * > * > So either physics is arithemetic, with true randomness built in, or* > *Or arithmetic is a subset of physics. * > *> consciousness is not computational.* > *I keep asking this question but I never receive an answer: "if consciousness is not computational then how did Darwin's theory of natural selection manage to produce at least one conscious being, me, ....., and possibly you too?" * John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> pu2 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3T_taFNH%2BtBXirsyco9Uaty7%2BgKLqu%3DLQSggqK%2B8Oeqw%40mail.gmail.com.
