Caledonian2 comments on Thou Art Physics - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 June 2008 06:37AM

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Comment author: Caledonian2 08 June 2008 07:06:00PM 2 points [-]

Computers are specifically designed so that we don't have to understand the hardware.

No, poke. It's true of any information-processing device.

That's why I said it's spurious to call anything but an artifact a computer. You don't need to understand the underlying physics because engineers have carefully designed the system that way.

NO, poke. It doesn't matter how the computation is carried out, as long as it is. The specific design is irrelevant.