whpearson comments on Dennett's "Consciousness Explained": Prelude - Less Wrong

12 Post author: PhilGoetz 10 January 2010 07:31AM

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Comment author: whpearson 10 January 2010 02:14:30PM *  0 points [-]

The trouble comes in when we start putting a utility on pleasure and pain. For example lets say you were given a programmatic description of a less than 100% faithful simulation of a human and asked to assess whether it would have (or reported it had) pain, without you running it.

Your answer would determine whether it was used in a world simulation.

Comment author: ciphergoth 10 January 2010 02:21:59PM 1 point [-]

Proposing a change in physics to make your utility function more intuitive seems like a serious mis-step to me.

Comment author: whpearson 10 January 2010 02:27:20PM *  1 point [-]

I'm just identifying the problem. I have no preferred solution at this point.

ETA: Altering physics is one possible solution. I'd wait on proposing a change to physics until we have a more concrete theory of intelligence and how human type systems are built. I think we can still push computers to be more like human-style systems. So I'm reserving judgement until we have those types of systems.