Do you agree that there is a set of equations that precisely describes the universe? You can compute the solutions for any system of differential equations through an infinite series of ever finer approximations.
there’s no guarantee that the laws of physics would necessarily generate conscious beings
The Turing machine might calculate the entire tree of all timelines, including this conversation. Do you suggest that there is a manner in which one can run a universe, that only starts to make a difference once life gets far enough, without which the people in it would fail to talk about consciousness?
If we wrote out a complete log of that tree on a ludicrously large piece of paper, and then walked over to the portion of it that describes this conversation, I am not claiming that we should treat the transcript as something worth protecting. I’m claiming that whatever the characters in the transcript have, that’s all we have.
Still, that could all happen with philosophical zombies. A computer agent (AI) doesn’t sleep and can function forever. These 2 factors is what leads me to believe that computers, as we currently define them, won’t ever be alive, even if they ever come to emulate the world perfectly. At best they’ll produce p-zombies.
Do you agree that there is a set of equations that precisely describes the universe? You can compute the solutions for any system of differential equations through an infinite series of ever finer approximations.
The Turing machine might calculate the entire tree of all timelines, including this conversation. Do you suggest that there is a manner in which one can run a universe, that only starts to make a difference once life gets far enough, without which the people in it would fail to talk about consciousness?
If we wrote out a complete log of that tree on a ludicrously large piece of paper, and then walked over to the portion of it that describes this conversation, I am not claiming that we should treat the transcript as something worth protecting. I’m claiming that whatever the characters in the transcript have, that’s all we have.
Still, that could all happen with philosophical zombies. A computer agent (AI) doesn’t sleep and can function forever. These 2 factors is what leads me to believe that computers, as we currently define them, won’t ever be alive, even if they ever come to emulate the world perfectly. At best they’ll produce p-zombies.