AstroCJ comments on Consciousness of simulations & uploads: a reductio - Less Wrong

1 Post author: simplicio 21 August 2010 08:02PM

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Comment author: AstroCJ 22 August 2010 10:54:26AM 0 points [-]

Disagree. If we allow humans to be deterministic then a "human as we know them" is driven solely by the physical laws of our universe; there is no sense in talking about our emotional motivations until we have decided that we have free will.

I think your argument does assume we have free will.

Comment author: JamesAndrix 22 August 2010 02:37:57PM 3 points [-]

I'm suggesting that the part of our minds that deals with hypotheticals silently rejects the premise that 'self' is a reliable squiggle controlled component in a deterministic machine.

I'm also saying this is a pretty accurate hardwired assumption about humans, because we do few things with very high reliability.

I don't think I'm assuming anything about free will. I don't think about it much, and I forgot how to dissolve it. I think that's a good thing.

Comment author: Perplexed 22 August 2010 03:22:11PM 2 points [-]

I think your argument assumes "emotional motivations" cannot be reduced to (explained by) the "physical laws of our universe".

Comment author: Unknowns 22 August 2010 11:16:22AM 1 point [-]

On the contrary, he is assuming we do not; he assumes that it is quite impossible that a human being would actually do the necessary work. That's why he said that "Simone can't exist" in this situation.

Comment author: AstroCJ 23 August 2010 05:29:09PM 0 points [-]

So his argument is that "a human is not an appropriate tool to do this deterministic thing". So what? Neither is a log flume - but the fact that log flumes can't be used to simulate consciousness doesn't tell us anything about consciousness.