I came across an old Discover magazine this morning with yet another article by Lanier on his rainstorm thought experiment. After reading the article it occurred to me that what he is saying may be equivalent to:
Imagine a sufficiently large computer that works according to the architecture of our ordinary PC's. In the space of Operating Systems (code interpreters), we can find an operating system such that it will run the input from the rainstorm such that it appears identical to a computer running a brain. If this is true, then functionalism is not affected since we must not forget to combine program + OS. Thus the rainstorm by itself has no emergent properties. Eric B. Ramsay ------------------------------------------- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=96140713-a54b2b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
