Adirian comments on Changing the Definition of Science - Less Wrong

17 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 May 2008 06:07PM

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Comment author: Adirian 20 May 2008 12:12:18AM 0 points [-]

Your high-capacity Einstein would come to the conclusion, left to those parameters, that the picture never changes. The pattern for that is infinitely stronger, thinking so quickly, than any of the smaller patterns within. Indeed, processing the same information so many times, it will encounter information miscopies nigh-infinitely more often than it encounters a change in the data itself - because, after all, a quantum computer will be operating on information storage mechanisms sensitive enough to be altered by a microwave oven a mile away.

You have a severe bootstrapping problem which you're ignoring - thought requires subject. Consciousness requires something to be conscious of. You can't design a consciousness and throw things for it to be conscious of after the fact. You have to start with the webcam and build up to the mind - otherwise the bits flowing in are meaningless. No amount of pattern recognition will give meaning to patterns.