My instant, cached response is “Obviously not, it’s no different from just letting it lay there unflipped, it’s not computation, it’s not a simulation, it’s not concious.” … And that’s true, as an answer to the question “is this torture”.
BUT, reading the comments, thinking about it a bit more, and the notion that every computation exists and that measure is what counts… And that one very likely candidate for what measure is is the K-complexity of outputting that mind/experience by specifying the laws of physics + a position within that universe where the mind happens to be… It seems suddenly not as implausible, that by acting as POINTERS to FINDING the minds computation, either by looking the pages or photons going all over the universe when it’s flipped, this act could indeed increase the measure of the tortured brain state and thus the decision problem might be that the book flipping is indeed a bad thing.
This actually sounds very plausible, but it requires a conjunction of several assumptions to work… Still, depending on the amount of flipping involved and the cost, the remaining probability is enough to reasonably shift decisions.
If this is true, it leads to all sorts of interesting counter-intuitive implications for what kind of physical implementations have which amount of moral weight. At the most extreme end of possibility things like simulating a mind on a Babbage engine made from some rare mix of heavy metals not found in nature might be of greater moral weight than a billion minds running on an opaque architecture implemented in carbon. And I don’t consider that a reductio, just immensely counter-intuitive. (and that was an extreme example meant to shock for demonstration, it’s unlikely to be THAT bad)
My instant, cached response is “Obviously not, it’s no different from just letting it lay there unflipped, it’s not computation, it’s not a simulation, it’s not concious.” … And that’s true, as an answer to the question “is this torture”.
BUT, reading the comments, thinking about it a bit more, and the notion that every computation exists and that measure is what counts… And that one very likely candidate for what measure is is the K-complexity of outputting that mind/experience by specifying the laws of physics + a position within that universe where the mind happens to be… It seems suddenly not as implausible, that by acting as POINTERS to FINDING the minds computation, either by looking the pages or photons going all over the universe when it’s flipped, this act could indeed increase the measure of the tortured brain state and thus the decision problem might be that the book flipping is indeed a bad thing.
This actually sounds very plausible, but it requires a conjunction of several assumptions to work… Still, depending on the amount of flipping involved and the cost, the remaining probability is enough to reasonably shift decisions.
If this is true, it leads to all sorts of interesting counter-intuitive implications for what kind of physical implementations have which amount of moral weight. At the most extreme end of possibility things like simulating a mind on a Babbage engine made from some rare mix of heavy metals not found in nature might be of greater moral weight than a billion minds running on an opaque architecture implemented in carbon. And I don’t consider that a reductio, just immensely counter-intuitive. (and that was an extreme example meant to shock for demonstration, it’s unlikely to be THAT bad)
This post made me actually THINK. Upvoted.