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John_Maxwell_IV comments on 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey: Call For Critiques/Questions - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (479)
I did find that objection less persuasive. I didn't say PZ's post was perfect.
I don't think doing rationality better than PZ should be our goal; I think figuring out what's true should be our goal. I do think that semi-ridicule by a professional biologist should be taken as evidence that the authors of WBE roadmap know less than they think (edit: but see Carl Shulman's comment). Beyond that, I'm out of my depth and happy to be corrected on specifics.
Argument screens off authority. When an esteemed biology writer dismisses a claim about computer simulations of life-forms by using an argument based on a serious confusion regarding computation (not regarding biology), his reputation as a biologist counts for nothing.
Any computer simulation can be run faster than real-time given adequate processing power; and this has nothing to do with whether the process being simulated can be accelerated.
Myers writes:
I didn't feel comfortable dismissing his objection out of hand, because I wasn't exactly sure what point he was trying to make. Then I read Carl Shulman's comment, and now I'm thinking it probably just didn't occur to him to simulate the brain in a sped-up virtual environment. Probably he assumed the simulation was expected to interact with the real world as flesh-and-blood humans do, just while thinking faster. If this was the goal, it seems his objection would be valid.
Fair enough. His point that a mind works with sense organs is a good one, it's true. Running a double-speed brain with single-speed audio inputs w...o...u...l...d ... n...o...t ... w...o...r...k.