But what about Eliezer's reply to Pigliucci's photosynthesis argument? As I understand it, Eliezer's counterargument was that intelligence and consciousness are like math in the sense that the simulation is the same as the real thing. In other words, we don't care about simulated sugar because we want the physical stuff itself, but we aren't so particular when it comes to arithmetic--the same answer in any form will do.
As far as I can tell, this argument still applies to gold unless there are good reasons to think that consciousness is substrate dependent. But as Eliezer pointed out in that diavlog, that doesn't seem likely.
As I understand it, Eliezer's counterargument was that intelligence and consciousness are like math in the sense that the simulation is the same as the real thing.
This morning I followed another discussion on Facebook between David Pearce and someone else about the same topic and he mentioned a quote by Stephen Hawking:
...What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model t
This post is a followup to "We are not living in a simulation" and intended to help me (and you) better understand the claims of those who took a computationalist position in that thread. The questions below are aimed at you if you think the following statement both a) makes sense, and b) is true:
"Consciousness is really just computation"
I've made it no secret that I think this statement is hogwash, but I've done my best to make these questions as non-leading as possible: you should be able to answer them without having to dismantle them first. Of course, I could be wrong, and "the question is confused" is always a valid answer. So is "I don't know".
a) Something that an abstract machine does, as in "No oracle Turing machine can compute a decision to its own halting problem"?
b) Something that a concrete machine does, as in "My calculator computed 2+2"?
c) Or, is this distinction nonsensical or irrelevant?
ETA: By the way, I probably won't engage right away with individual commenters on this thread except to answer requests for clarification. In a few days I'll write another post analyzing the points that are brought up.