Unless we suppose those books describe how to implement a memory of sorts, and how to reason, etc. But then how sure are we it’s not conscious?

And you can wonder, is this accidental complexity? Or is this necessary complexity?

The only thing that graph shows is that China was dirt poor in 1995, and is now still only at 25-35% of USA levels.

Since our reality is "atoms and void", and since the sun and earth are huge configurations of atoms locked together in a stable pattern, the sun coming up tomorrow has nothing to do with statistics. And bayesian reasoning plays no role in our predictions or certainty. At least not directly. It does indirectly, by asking what perturbation, what intervention, can stop this from happening? And how likely are such events?

That resolves the whole Mary knowledge problem. Books cannot inject that kind of direct knowledge. Thus the claim "mary knows everything" is either false, or only true for a smaller domain.

One can think of analogies, like tamper resistant logs, or unique CPU states while doing static analysis vs running a program.

All in all, the non-physicalist conclusions are widely overdrawn. More over, for what it is worth, Jackson himself no longer thinks this argument is a good one.

- software is all about adding numbers, new study finds

- software is all about calling functions, says new theory

- software is all about objects, say scientists

- software is all about virtual machines, according to new discovery

That is entirely unknown. If it were a purely computational phenomenon, it would explain a lot, and nothing in this article argues against it. Except, perhaps, the iron bar mapping. But it seems to miss that a computer program basically defines a causal network. And recognizing and comparing causal networks is much more objective then the thought experiment acknowledges.

1. Do nothing, public gets angry.

2. Make bitcoin, or its mining, illegal. However, what is the criteria? All blockchains? Should google be illegal too? Both are just a digital product that the public wants.

3. Tax CO2 production by data centers, that might have a chance it can be coordinated broadly between nations, there is enough money there to tax, and bitcoin adds some urgency.

While doubtful CO2 can be taxed globally, without coordination, big companies play governments against each other.

The problem with an empirical approach is that, when in one state it might respond to an intervention differently than when in another state. Especially if the interventions are at the same level as the signals it normally responds to. (Eg not drowning it in a chemical that inhibits a certain reaction, that will likely always yield the same outcome. But a regulatory hormone might not always yield the same outcome.)

My musings on consciousness, materialism, information, knowledge, life, the universe. Might not all be correct ;) But I think must will find it quite different from the "normal" views.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22496953

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