CronoDAS comments on Normal Cryonics - Less Wrong

58 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 January 2010 07:08PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (930)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: CronoDAS 21 January 2010 06:17:19AM 2 points [-]

Yeah, Penrose's position that the human brain is a hypercomputer isn't really supported by known physics, but there's still enough unknown and poorly understood physics that it can't be ruled out. His "proof" that human brains are hypercomputers based on applying Godel's incompleteness theorem to human mathematical reasoning, however, missed the obvious loophole: Godel's theorem only applies to consistent systems, and human reasoning is anything but consistent!

Comment author: pdf23ds 21 January 2010 07:59:45AM 1 point [-]

His "proof" that human brains are hypercomputers based on applying Godel's incompleteness theorem to human mathematical reasoning, however, missed the obvious loophole: Godel's theorem only applies to consistent systems, and human reasoning is anything but consistent!

I thought the obvious loophole was that brains aren't formal systems.

Comment author: CronoDAS 21 January 2010 08:40:22AM 1 point [-]

If you can simulate them in a Turing machine, then they might as well be.