X-Message-Number: 32896
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2010 19:11:51 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely, Ever 
References: <>

At 02:00 2010-10-01, you wrote:
>Message #32890
>From: 
>Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 22:08:47 -0400 (EDT)
>Subject: Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely, Ever
>
>[...]
>Reason  1.  A simulation in a digital computer is just a coded description.

You've overlooked the distinction between "description" and "ongoing 
process." You could presumably interact with an ongoing process, 
maybe have a conversation with it, let it adapt its responses to what 
you say, etc.

>With unimportant  exceptions, a description of a thing is not that thing,

Well, a simulated computation (a process not just a description) is a 
computation and computations are important, aren't they?

>and encoding the  description makes it worse.
>For example, I can write down the quantum description of  a hydrogen atom
>in its ground state, but that writing on paper will not be a  hydrogen atom.
>If I could write down the description of a water molecule, a  collection of
>these would not be wet.

Simulated water is not wet, right? Is a simulated conscious system 
conscious? To me the analogy between the two is problematic, because 
water (or simulated water) cannot express a point of view about its 
own wetness. A simulated conscious system could pronounce about its 
own consciousness however--and I think you would have to take that 
seriously. In appropriate circumstances your simulated system might 
seem very convincingly to have the feelings and awareness it claimed 
to have. So then you would have to ask, does it "really" have these 
things or is it just a zombie, an imitation with no consciousness? 
That is the main question I think you would face. An a priori 
judgment that it couldn't possibly be conscious because, well, it's 
just a simulation obviously won't do. I don't see any good argument 
at present against imputing consciousness based on information 
processing rather than what kind of matter the system is made of and 
other such substrate issues. In other words I think you could have 
substrate-independent minds.

Mike

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