Re: Emulation vs. Simulation

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Mar 25 2001 - 15:05:49 MST


On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Lee Corbin wrote:

> Yes, but surviving cursory examination by AOL members,
> which is only on-line and not real-world anyway, is
> hardly much of a challenge. I agree, instead, with
> what you wrote earlier: "if a... creature does not
> have 'feelings' that promote its survival, then it's
> very rapidly a dead [creature]". Same goes for
> consciousness, I think.
>
I would maintain that I can construct a zombie that had
no 'feelings' regarding a fear of being hit by a car
while crossing the street but still *behaved* as if it had
a fear of hitting a car while crossing the street. This
may be done simply by monitoring the most behaviors people
display when they are about to cross the street and
constructing a "body" direction program that exactly
reproduces those behaviors. No 'feelings', no 'consciousness'.
Just a zombie that is very careful about crossing the street.

Perhaps I'm just used to interacting with computers too
much (they have fairly shallow behavior patterns). Or
perhaps Dennet sees something in the complexity of
human behavior that I don't see. We shall see...

Robert



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