This is really, really awesome and I hope it gets traction in the philosophy community. Aaronson does a great job closing the inferential distance gap where necessary, gives his clearest yet exposition of topics related to computational complexity, a provides a truly enlightening, consistent way to view various topics.
In particular I liked his discussion of the “waterfall” argument (whether a waterfall can be said to be playing chess because you can find an I/O mapping to a chess program); it really outdoes the discussion of the same topic in Good and Real, where Drescher describes it as the “joke interpretation” of a rock in the context of consciousness.
This is really, really awesome and I hope it gets traction in the philosophy community. Aaronson does a great job closing the inferential distance gap where necessary, gives his clearest yet exposition of topics related to computational complexity, a provides a truly enlightening, consistent way to view various topics.
In particular I liked his discussion of the “waterfall” argument (whether a waterfall can be said to be playing chess because you can find an I/O mapping to a chess program); it really outdoes the discussion of the same topic in Good and Real, where Drescher describes it as the “joke interpretation” of a rock in the context of consciousness.