Joe Jenkins wrote:
>
> --- "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > As you know, I think consciousness is noncomputable.
>
> This is a highly controversial statement for the extropians list. Would
> you please provide an argument to support it? If it has been recently
> debated, a pointer to the thread title would suffice.
Guys, please don't send extra copies to me, okay? Then I reply to it personally, since I check the Inbox before the Extropian Inbox, and the rest of the list doesn't get the message.
My reply was:
> Quite true. I don't actually think I've debated it recently... about
> two, three years back, with John K Clark, was the last time I said
> anything at all. I'm afraid I'm not interested in debating it again,
> though. Sorry.
>
> Basically, I used to be a Strong AIer, until I tried to define
> computation in observer-independent terms - whether process A
> instantiates process B - and wound up with a lot of basic elements of
> cognition (many of which made it into _Coding_) but no objective
> definition. I concluded that the Turing formalism formalized human
> reasoning rather than physical law. Fini.
-- sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html http://pobox.com/~sentience/singul_arity.html Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you everything I think I know.