From: Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Jan 12 1997 - 09:45:52 MST
> I assume you don't want to debate this point. You said the same thing before,
> I responded at some length explaining exactly why you were wrong, you said
> nothing.
Since you said I said "nothing", I *will* debate it, briefly.
1) It is possible that consciousness is computable, but that the brain
projects an energy field which survives the death of the neurons.
2) It is possible that consciousness is noncomputable, but that it
still goes out like a light with the removal of the brain, and is
nothing more than the interaction of the noncomputable physical
particles making up the brain.
3) There are known mathematical concepts, such as "oracle machines",
which violate the Church-Turing thesis in a technical sense by being
able to solve the halting problem for lesser oracular ordinals, such as
Turing machines. These mathematical concepts have no religious
implications.
4) Quantum randomness, if truly random, is not computable in the strict
sense. This has no religious implications and does not even *impinge*
on AI, since a pseudo-random generator (or a pregenerated bit stream)
would work just as well.
I admit that a complete disproof of the Church-Turing thesis, in spirit
as well as letter, would up the probability that we have immortal souls,
for the simple reason that Turing machines definitely aren't a-priori
immortal.
But:
1) Challenging the Church-Turing thesis does not make me a religious
lunatic;
2) Being a religious lunatic does not automatically imply that I am
wrong;
3) Do *you* know how computation gives rise to consciousness? Try to
be
a bit more open-minded until you have the Final Answer!
> I assume you don't want to debate this point. You said the same thing before,
> I responded at some length explaining exactly why you were wrong, you said
> nothing.
As for your explanation, I saved it and have it flagged in my list of
favorite messages. It's very interesting. The only problem is that it
applied as well to ones and zeroes as any hypothesized soul... applied
far better to discrete ones and zeroes than to mysterious, and possibly
inherently unified, phenomena. I found it much easier to read as a
disproof of Church-Turing, and saved it for that purpose.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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