Re: Sentience

From: Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Date: Wed Dec 20 2000 - 08:35:40 MST


scerir wrote:

> Penrose says that human "thought"
> must be noncomputable, but may
> still be deterministic.
> He makes the analogy with certain
> tiling patterns, which are noncomputable.

Since there is an algorithm (and quite a simple one
at that) with which pseudoperiodic tilings can
be constructed, they are of course computable.
You cannot predict the position at lattice
location x,y without doing all the work in between,
but this is not true with physical processes occuring
between our ears either. There is so far zero
evidence of Penrose/Hameroff kind of parallelism
at neurotubule level (which would btwo not produce anything
fundamentally noncomputable, only pack a lot of parallel
computations into a very small footprint). Invoking deus
et machinas not even at slightest provocation is not known
for being good science, that's for certain.
 
> Chaitin shows that some of the deepest
> foundations (of mathematics) are based on
> truths which are purely random.

Random, pseudorandom, where is the difference?
 
> How are we able to create, perceive,
> experience, choose among these noncomputable
> "truths"?

There are several problems with that question
which make it difficult to answer as it stands.



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