X-Message-Number: 21376
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 08:16:37 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #21356 - #21363

For Mike Perry:

Your discussion of awareness in computers has several empty spots.
First of all, where in the Turing test is awareness even discussed?
Second, you clearly believe that there is no valid test for 
awareness. Yet we already have (very poor focus) ways to read
brains as they work. This ability is improving. So who says I
could not find out whether or not you were aware?

I'm not saying that our brains work by some magical process at
all. They work by processes we are coming to understand; and
their working is much more like the operation of a piston
or the slow burning of a fire than like the inevitably symbolic
operations of a computer. That is why I have said and are saying
that computers by their nature cannot be aware. Sure, just like
you some 3rd party could read awareness into their activities,
but if they do they have been fooled.

And so far as you can build a machine which works like a brain
rather than a computer, working not with symbols at all but
with the world, then you can build a self-aware machine. It
may turn out cruel to do that, but not impossible.

For Tim Freeman:

Given the various cryonicists who have spoken about being 
uploaded into some kind of powerful computer, discussions about
whether or not such computers are really aware becomes VERY
pertinent to us. You can read the message to Mike above:
but uploading someone into a computer is a copout.  And 
theoretically, if uploading into computers ceased to be 
believed as a solution to revival, then such discussions 
about awareness would no longer be relevant, just as you say.

           Best wishes and long long life for all,

                Thomas Donaldson

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