I also wondered why trains were supposedly fatal to the law of deodands whereas ships were not. My spur-of-the-moment, totally uninformed guess was that, in the case of shipwrecks, the sea (or, more generally, the marine environment) was regarded as the killer. The scenarios that Richard Posner is writing about seem somewhat different, however, at least in that after a shipwreck more serious than a calm-water grounding, there's often nothing much to seize.

I am glad I saw it, as now I am interested in learning more about Bend.

Like stanleykm, I found this analogy somewhat puzzling. On reflection, I think the author's point is this: the statistics of actual usage do not seem sufficient to produce a fluent LLM; it also takes reinforcement learning.

From the Introduction, the gist of this statement seems (to me) to be that Harvard's finding of grave misconduct cannot simply be taken as being correct, and so the issue should be put to a jury.

Harvard has counter-sued, apparently alleging that Gino had altered and backdated an Excel file presented as evidence that Harvard's investigation had used the wrong data - a claim which which she, of course, denies.

A year ago, the judge denied Data Colada's request for Gino to reimburse their legal fees after the dismissal of the case against them, which strikes me as unfortunate.

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67659904/gino-v-harvard...

[2] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67659904/258/gino-v-pre...

In reply to your statement that you don't see a reason why a brain absent a mind could not be simulated, let's consider whether we could have a simulation of an Enigma machine that does not encrypt and decrypt messages.

It is possible in a trivial sense, of course: you could have a sort of cargo-cult simulation where the plug-board can be connected in various ways, the rotors turn when a key is pressed and one of the lights come on, but it lacks the causal relationships to produce output it could decrypt. This, however, is just an incomplete simulation, and the one that matters is this: could you completely digitally simulate the physics of an Enigma machine in a way that is incapable of being used to perform encrypted communication? If not, then there is something very wrong with what seems to be well-established physics.

Now let's suppose that we could do a complete-physics simulation of a person's brain. It will be missing many of the features of a brain (it will not consume material nutrients and produce waste products, for example), but how would you go about testing for whether it has a mind? How would an absence of a mind manifest itself? If you think the answer lies in the simulation not being part of a body, then let's suppose we simulate the person's whole body.

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With regard to your concluding question, "Are you claiming that the specific bit formations here indicate the presence of a mind?", the short answer is no. I feel that with this question you are reverting to an earlier issue that we have already gone over: a digital simulation of anything is not just a pattern of bits, it is a physical process (i.e. a sequence of events.)

This is somewhat begging the question, in that it tacitly presupposes that the system itself is incapable of interpreting it, but if the formation of this bit-pattern has certain consequences, such as the system saying it is in pain, redirecting its attention to finding any means to eliminate it while avoiding anything tending to exacerbate it, and forming memories which will have the consequence that the system will, from now on, try to avoid circumstances likely to cause its recurrence, then on what basis would you reject its own claims of being in pain?

Furthermore, there is an important class of simulations that are important generally and very relevant here, and it is those where the equivalence is in the generation and transformation of information. When X simulates Y in this regard, and what matters (in whatever it is that makes Y interesting or important to us) is the information generated and/or transformed by it, then we can indeed substitute X for Y. So, in the Enigma machine example, would you argue that the output of a physical Enigma machine when it encodes a given text is not the same as the output from an equivalently set-up Enigma machine simulation encoding the same message?

As the text of the two outputs would be identical, I will assume you will allow that in this case, the simulation is performing the same function as the physical machine. Now suppose someone comes along and says "That can't be right! You can use the physical machine as a footrest, but not the simulation, so the Enigma simulation cannot substitute for the physical machine as a communications-security device."

Would you be persuaded that this argument is sound when applied in this case? If you think it is, then I do not think we can discuss this issue any further, but if not, then would you be any more persuaded by this argument: "That can't be right! A simulated rainstorm will not get you wet, so the Enigma simulation cannot substitute for the physical machine as a communications-security device?"

If you think the latter is sound while the latter is not, then I would be really interested in understanding why you would think that. If you think the latter is unsound, then you are in complete agreement with the whole point of my original post in this thread: arguments like "simulated rain does not get you wet" are useless against the simulation argument.

This does not establish that a sufficiently-accurate simulation of a brain could have a mind, of course, and while I think it would, I do not claim to know it would, and it would take more than the absence of conclusive proof in this matter to persuade me that it is implausible. In particular, I am familiar with all the widely-made arguments in that direction, and not only do I think they are defeasible, I think that the philosophical approach of "going metaphysical" is unlikely to succeed; if nothing else, we have been doing this for centuries, if not millennia, and nothing like a broad consensus has emerged from it (just look at the SEP Qualia entry [1], for example) - but that discussion goes far beyond what can be usefully debated in a website comments section.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/

What I actually wrote was this: "Then, presumably, you will also hold that when you have digitally modeled a brain such that the model responds to its inputs as a brain does, then you have built a brain." This has to be read in the context of the post by ratelimitsteve to which I was replying: I am not saying that I think that when you have digitally modeled a brain such that the model responds to its inputs as a brain does, then you have built a brain, I am saying it is something that ratelimitsteve would have difficulty denying while being consistent with his distinction between simulating and building. Personally, I would not say that simulating a brain to this extent amounts to building a brain, as that seems to me to be unnecessarily awkward usage that I feel will lead to confusion without making anything clearer. I would still call it a simulation, albeit one that might justifiably be called functionally isomorphic to a biological brain if it were good enough.

I would describe the relationship between an Enigma machine and a digital simulation of one in the same terms, and if I possessed an actual Enigma machine, I would not willingly swap it for a digital simulation!

With that said, let's go back to your second paragraph:

"You say that the physical hardware your enigma simulation runs on provides the causal element..."

Yes. The design of the physical Enigma device contains an abstract specification of how outputs are to be generated from inputs, such that when the machine is used, physics ensures that the correct output for any valid input is generated as a consequence of the causal relationships between its components. In the same way, the software of its digital simulator contains an abstract specification of how outputs are to be generated from inputs, such that when the program is run on a sufficiently capable computer, physics ensures that the correct output for any valid input is generated as a consequence of the causal relationships between its components, once the program has been loaded.

"...but the simulation of the nuclear reactor also runs on physical hardware. Yet it obviously doesn't provide the causal element..."

Correct, insofar as a computer is not capable of undergoing nuclear fission, regardless of how it is programmed.

"...and neither does the enigma machine simulation's hardware. There are no spinning gears for example."

No - these two cases are not equivalent. Nuclear fission is required for a nuclear reactor to function, but rotating gears are not required for encrypting or decrypting a message according to the enigma machine's abstract specification; they are just how the specification happens to be implemented in the machine.

"...Hence why you and I both call it a simulation, I think we're in agreement here."

Well, we both seem to be in agreement as to what to call it, but apparently not over why we think that.

In next paragraph ("I think you could argue that..") you say you could agree that the essence of the enigma machine is not grounded in physical reality, it's the abstract relationships we're talking about.

I am OK with that so long as it is understood that some sort of implementation is required for anything to happen.

Now we get to the misunderstanding of my reply to ratelimitsteve, covered above, and after that you go on to say "the claim is that the essence of the brain is the abstract relationships, correct?" My response to this is the same as with regard to the essence of an Enigma machine: I am OK with that so long as it is understood that some sort of implementation is required for anything to happen.

The next paragraph begins "The problem I see is that consciousness is a physical phenomenon...", and I tend to agree with the claim (though not that it is a problem) again in the sense that some sort of implementation seems to be required for anything to happen. I don't claim to be able to prove this, let alone explain how it works in brains, it just seems to me that there's no plausible alternative.

Then you write "In fact it seems like it's the magnum opus of phenomenon, in that all our experience comes from our consciousness..." To me, this appears to be a version of Cartesian doubt, about which I am extremely skeptical, in this sense: I think it is tendentious for anyone to invoke it only when it greases a sticky argument, while otherwise acting, speaking and arguing as if our sensory experiences give us reliable information about an external world.

Finally, we get to the crux of the matter: "you have to then bridge the gap between the simulation and physical reality." Here you just declare there to be a gap between the simulation and physical reality, but to my mind, nothing you have written up to this point provides any justification for thinking there is a gap that needs to be bridged. As best I can tell, you feel that by emphasizing the abstract nature of what you call the essence of a simulation you have divorced it from the physical, and my response to that has been, consistently, to point out that these abstractions do not get anything done unless they have some implementation, and there is no evidence of those implementations being in any sense non-physical.

There are many differences between Enigma-machine simulation and nuclear-reactor simulation, but the one that is relevant here is that the former's inputs and outputs are abstract information, and we have very good reason to think that a brain's biological purpose (in the sense of what the organism needs it to do) is, like the Enigma machine's, abstract information processing in the broad sense.

Update: I see ratelimitsteve agrees with that assertion.

No such thing as what? As far as I can tell, I have asserted no such thing as there being no such thing, whatever it is.