From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Dec 15 2000 - 12:21:51 MST
Dan Fabulich wrote:
>
> Ah, but if you told me: "Listen, you can never predict when this
> Pentium II will stop looking for a counter example to the Goldbach
> Conjecture," I could say: "Yes, I can. This machine has 512MB of RAM,
> so it can't hold a number greater than 2^(512 * 1024^2 * 8). All I
> need is a computer with, say, 1024MB of RAM to check and see whether
> your Pentium II machine will halt."
Well, if we're going to play *that* game, then I may as well point out
that, "in reality", you always have a finite amount of time before your
machine crumbles to dust, so no, you can't use a 1024MB machine to check a
512MB one.
Consciousness is real. It affects us, physically - it certainly affects
the physical words we type on our physical keyboards, or what on Earth are
we talking about? If you find yourself discussing Turing machines that
run for O(2^N) years, it may be an indication that you're looking in the
wrong place for answers...
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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