Comment on Open Thread: February 2010, part 2

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:10:48 GMT

From EY's post:

The fourth horn of the anthropic trilemma is to deny that increasing the number of physical copies increases the weight of an experience, which leads into Boltzmann brain problems, and may not help much (because alternatively designed brains may be able to diverge and then converge as different experiences have their details forgotten).

Suppose I build a (conscious) brain in hardware using today's technology. It uses a very low current density, to avoid electromigration.

Suppose I build two of them, and we agree that both of them experience consciousness.

Then I learn a technique for treating the wafers to minimize electromigration. I create a new copy of the brain, the same as the first copy, only using twice the current, and hence being implemented by a flow of twice as many electrons.

As far as the circuits and the electrons travelling them are concerned, running it is very much like running the original 2 brains physically right next to each other in space.

So, does the new high-current brain have twice as much conscious experience?

Discuss