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asr comments on an ethical puzzle about brain emulation - Less Wrong Discussion

14 Post author: asr 13 December 2013 09:53PM

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Comment author: asr 17 December 2013 03:11:28AM 0 points [-]

The reference is a good one -- thanks! But I don't quite understand the rest of your comments. Can you rephrase more clearly?

Comment author: summerstay 17 December 2013 02:58:18PM 1 point [-]

Sorry, I was just trying to paraphrase the paper in one sentence. The point of the paper is that there is something wrong with computationalism. It attempts to prove that two systems with the same sequence of computational states must have different conscious experiences. It does this by taking a robot brain that calculates the same way as a conscious human brain, and transforms it, always using computationally equivalent steps, to a system that is computationally equivalent to a digital clock. This means that either we accept that a clock is at every moment experiencing everything that can be experienced, or that something is wrong with computationalism. If we take the second option, it means that two systems with the exact same behavior and computational structure can have different perceptual consciousness.