At 11:38 PM 3/25/01 -0800, Lee Corbin wrote:
>Okay, suppose that we have a creature (that I still don't want
>to call a zombie) which has 10^x times as much storage capability
>as a human being, and it merely does a lookup for everything that
>could conceivably happen to it. It never really calculates
>anything. I will officially concede that if x is a big enough
>number, then the entity is not conscious, and therefore is a
>zombie.
I ask this in ignorance: how quickly could such a monster look-up
table--listed, presumably, by a god, or someone else equal to the task--be
looked up (magic physics not allowed in this test)?
BTW, this possibility seems to me to fall over dead in just the way that
Skinner's behaviorism did when famously assailed by Chomsky (and wasn't
there an exchange along these lines just a few weeks ago? what a shame I
can't look up the table and find out).
Damien Broderick
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