From: Max M (maxmcorp@worldonline.dk)
Date: Thu Feb 06 2003 - 01:14:58 MST
Well I guess that I am kind of dense that it hasn't occured to me
before. But suddenly something clicked last night. You know, a kind of
"blinding Flash Of The Obvious".
If there is no soul, as I am convinced. And if uploading is possible, as
I am convinced, then the I/mind is just the calculations taking place
inside the brain. It is not the brain itself.
Well this has been obvious for me for a long time. But what freaked me
out a bit, is that it is not the flesh that has conscience but the
'calculations' that is done in the flesh. And the flesh is only the
interface that allows us to experience the world.
And it is pretty hard to imagine mathematics that is self aware, but
that must be the consequence.
To take an example: The famous chinese room.
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/c/chineser.htm
It is not the room which is intelligent, but that calculations taking
place inside the room.
This is what makes it so hard to grasp untuitively that intelligence can
take place there. The room itself is not what is alive ot intelligent,
but the calculations taking place on those paper pieces are.
The room is just the interface with the world. A very bad interface. The
intelligence that could take place in those pieces of paper would have a
poor understanding of the world.
So the amusing thing is that, given enough time, it should be possible
to run a program with a pencil, on a piece paper, that has intelligence
and conscience. If you stop writing the life ends and you kill your
'creature'.
This opens up for all kinds of oportunities for where life can exist.
It makes you wonder if life can suddenly come into spontaneous existence
from the computations that is taking place on the net. I cannot see why
not. Shurely it cannot be a worse medium than atoms in water. Unless it
is too deterministic.
So keep those emails comming. You never know if the extropy list has
some kind of life of it's own ...
-- hilsen/regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark http://www.futureport.dk/ Fremtiden, videnskab, skeptiscisme og transhumanisme
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