Lukas_P.
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Lukas_P. has not written any posts yet.
Lukas_P. has not written any posts yet.
"So reductionism is wrong - a thing can be more than the sum of it's parts (since "thing" includes action)."
The problem with this statement is that you don't define what you mean by sum. I for one cannot imagine what the term 'fingers + palm + thumb' is supposed to mean. Apparently by sum you don't mean arithmetic sum, but something different.
Perhaps by 'sum' you mean something like 'put those ingredients into a beaker, shake it a little and then see what you get'.
And of course, if you defined 'sum', you'll need to define 'more' (and 'less') in this context. Perhaps you'll see that it's about the language and how we use it. We overload many words to mean different things and too often we use the special meaning of a word in a context where it doesn't belong.
"To be clear then, your objection is that any physical device that seems to add is doing something different from a "theoretical" device that doesn't actually get built."
As long as the domain on which they act is different, they are doing different things. If your theoretical device includes the whole universe as the domain on which it acts, then you generally cannot prove that they are doing different things (Halting problem).
But I do not say that you cannot create an AI that seems to act like a human, and I am not saying that it wouldn't be thinking like a human or that it wouldn't be conscious.
"Lukas, I don't understand your objection at all. How does disrupting the physical adding machine mid-process prove that it isn't doing addition? One can also disrupt electronic computers mid-process..."
I didn't say it doesn't do addition; I said that it doesn't do the same addition that the 'theoretical' adder is doing. That's what Elizier called 'artificial addition'.
All you can say is that the physical adder will most of the time do a 'physical addition' that corresponds to the 'theoretical addition'; but you need to make a lot of assumptions about the environment of the physical adder (it doesn't melt, it doesn't explode etc.), and those assumptions don't need to hold.
You don't need to make assumptions for the theoretical adder: You define it to do addition.
"I know (or could readily rediscover) how to build a binary adder from logic gates. If I can figure out how to make individual logic gates from Legos or ant trails or rolling ping-pong balls, then I can add two 32-bit unsigned integers using Legos or ant trails or ping-pong balls."
To me this sounds pretty much like a domain error. Your 'theoretical' binary adder, is a function of Binary x Binary -> Binary x Binary. Your Lego adder has a different domain, it's function is: Lego x Universe\Lego -> Lego x Universe\Lego
Now you need a tranformation from Lego x Universe\Lego -> Binary x Binary, so you can check whether they are... (read more)
"Here's a question from a layman: if untold trillions of new universes are being created all the time, where is all that energy coming from to create them?"
Well, you've got the same problem with a single world: Where did the energy for our 'single' Universe when 'it was created' came from?
The problem here is that you assume that universes are created which did not exist before; in this case you indeed need to take the energy from somewhere. But as I understand, they never did not exist (beware of double negation!). They already existed before the split took place in your personal memory.
But somehow I still can't buy into this thing; where is... (read more)
@Elizier
"I think you are confusing knowing that a system will perform arithmetic, with the system actually performing arithmetic. The latter does happen sometimes, despite all fallible assumptions."
I think you didn't understand my argumentation; when you say that a physical system does perform arithmetic, then your theory of arithmetic is wrong as soon as you have a contradicting result.Therefore the system is not allowed to perform arithmetic sometimes, but it is required to do it always!
Let's consider this: I find a machine I don't know anything about it. I soon find out it has two input dials and what looks like an output register.
By experimenting with the inputs and noting the outputs I... (read more)