Let’s say the world is a grid of Game of Life cells evolving in discrete time. What counts as a “subprogram”?
Let’s further say that world contains embedded computers that run programs. Will your notion of “subprogram”, specified purely in terms of Game of Life cells, be strong enough to capture subprograms of these programs?
Again, I agree that the problem of identifying what logical structures (whereever they occur) count as implementing a particular function is a deep and interesting one, and not one that I am claiming to have solved. But again, I do not agree that it is a problem I have introduced? An FDT agent correctly inferring the downstream causal results of setting FDT(P––,G––)=a would, in general, have to identify FDT(P––,G––) being computed inside a Game of Life simulation, if and where such a calculation so occured.
While I am indeed interested in exploring the answers to your questions, I don’t see that they represent a specific challenge to the idea that the above notion of counterfactuals might be worth exploring further, in the way that your original claim would.
Let’s say the world is a grid of Game of Life cells evolving in discrete time. What counts as a “subprogram”?
Let’s further say that world contains embedded computers that run programs. Will your notion of “subprogram”, specified purely in terms of Game of Life cells, be strong enough to capture subprograms of these programs?
Again, I agree that the problem of identifying what logical structures (whereever they occur) count as implementing a particular function is a deep and interesting one, and not one that I am claiming to have solved. But again, I do not agree that it is a problem I have introduced? An FDT agent correctly inferring the downstream causal results of setting FDT(P––,G––)=a would, in general, have to identify FDT(P––,G––) being computed inside a Game of Life simulation, if and where such a calculation so occured.
While I am indeed interested in exploring the answers to your questions, I don’t see that they represent a specific challenge to the idea that the above notion of counterfactuals might be worth exploring further, in the way that your original claim would.