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Constant comments on Eight questions for computationalists - Less Wrong
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I'm currently having an exchange with Massimo Pigliucci of Rationally Speaking who might be known here due to his Bloggingheads debate with Eliezer Yudkowsky where he was claiming that "you can simulate the 'logic' of photosynthetic reactions in a computer, but you ain't gonna get sugar as output." I have a hard time to wrap my mind around his line of reasoning, but I'll try:
Let's assume that you wanted to simulate gold. What does it mean to simulate gold?
According to Wikipedia to simulate something means to represent certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical system.
If we were going to simulate the chemical properties of gold, would we be able to use it as a vehicle for monetary exchange on the gold market? Surely not, some important characteristics seem to be missing. We do not assign the same value to a simulation of gold that we assign to gold itself.
What would it take to simulate the missing properties? A particle accelerator or nuclear reactor.
In conclusion, we need to create gold to get gold, no simulation apart from the creation of the actual physically identical substance will do the job. Consequently, in the case of gold at least, substrate neutrality is false.
The key word here is "represent", which is not to be confused with "reproduce".
No, we don't need a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator to simulate, i.e. to represent the missing properties. We need them to reproduce the missing properties. But to simulate something is to represent characteristics of it, not reproduce them.
Now, there's an obvious opening here for someone to try to build an argument based on the fact that a simulation need not reproduce characteristics. It would then be necessary to argue that mere representation of certain characteristics is sufficient to reproduce others. But that would be a new argument, and I'm just addressing this one.
When I run an old 8 bit game on a Commodore-64 emulator it seems to me that the emulation functionally reproduces a Commodore-64. The experience of playing the game can clearly be faithfully reproduced.
Hasn't something been reproduced if one cannot tell the difference between the operation of the original system and that of the simulation?
In case of C64 emulator, the game is represented, your experience is reproduced. As for second, I think it's purely subjectional as it depends on what level of output you expect from simulation. For gamer the emulator game can be "reproduction", for engineer that seek some details on inner workings of Commodore it can be just an approximation of "real thing" and of no use for him.