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dxu comments on GAZP vs. GLUT - Less Wrong
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Sure, at least for integer values of x. :p
That doesn't answer your point, though, which I presume was to appeal to a notion of interchangeable parts being equivalent, as Turing has suggested. I think it would be inaccurate to say that GLUT=Bob, even if FGLUT(input) = FBob(input). It's not like comparing the same software or function running on two different operating systems. It's comparing a function programmed in C# with throwing sand on the table and noticing that, if you interpret the pattern as dots and dashes, the Morse code happens to give the same result.
A Turing test seems like it should be valid in all real instances. The randomly generated GLUT, by definition, is one among countless trillions and trillions which gives a false positive on a Turing test. It'd be like giving 10^^^^^^^^^^^2 Turing tests via phone to an empty room, and having the random static just happen to sound like words in some of them, and have those words happen to form coherent sentences in a subset of those, and then have those coherent sentences happen to by actual rational answers to the examiner's questions.
The difference is that, with the GLUT, you've created a list of all possible answers, and then rejected everything but the coherent ones that match a certain personality type and resemble a single person. You've then taken just these pre-recordings, from among countless trillions of trillions, and labeled them alone as your conscious GLUT and used them to pass a Turing test. However, it's not fair to look just at this one pass, any more than it is reasonable to look at just the one pass out of trillions from the random noise on the phone line. You have to also consider the trillions and trillions of failed attempts. If all the static in the phone line "words" and "sentences" had been pre-recorded before the trillions of tests, would you then say that the one tape to pass was truly conscious?
Ah. I think I understand your position a bit better now; thanks. Now let me ask you the following question:
Suppose I take a certain volume of space large enough to hold a human brain--say, a 1-by-1-by-1-cubic-meter space. Now let us suppose that I fill that space with a random arrangement of quarks and electrons. This will almost certainly produce nothing more than a shapeless blob of matter. But now suppose that I continue doing this, over and over again, until finally, after perhaps quintillions upon quintillions of trials, I finally manage to construct a human brain--simply out of random chance. (This is actually a real phenomenon speculated about by physicists, known as the Boltzmann brain.)
Assuming that this brain doesn't die immediately due to being created in a vacuum, would you agree that it is conscious?
The vast majority of such brains would not be. They'd just be hunks of dead meat, no different from the brain of a cadaver. A tiny subset, however, would be conscious, at least until they ran out of oxygen or whatever and died.
I'm not objecting to the matter in which the GLUT is created, but merely observing that it doesn't have a form which seems like it would give rise to consciousness. Without knowing the exact mechanism by which human brains give rise to consciousness, it is difficult to say precisely where to draw the line between calling something conscious or not conscious, but a GLUT doesn't seem to be structured in a way that could think. I'm arguing that it is possible, at least in principle, to cheat a Turing test with a GLUT.
I gave a few more comments in response to blossom's question if you are interested.