Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Now let's say we run the playback, and, at each step, consult the
> original state transition diagram to find out what the results *would*
> have been, but then discard that result and load in the tape. In other
> words, we compute each step, at each point along the recording, but we
> don't connect them causally to each other; we discard the result and
> load the recorded step, even though the two happen to be identical.
If this simulation is based on a human (or even animal) mind, the two states
will almost never be the same. Most of what happens in the mind is
probabilistic, not mechanistic - so if you simulate the same 100ms of
processing a million times, you will get a million slightly different end
states.
Now, I don't know whether this is a necessary property of a conscious mind
or not, but it seems entirely plausible that it might be. If it is, then
you need a Turing machine with a random number generator to run a mind as
software, and the whole system has very different properties than an
algorithmic program.
I don't think this observation actually solves the problem at hand, but it does close off a lot of blind alleys.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com