From: Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Date: Mon Mar 29 1999 - 11:53:27 MST
hal@rain.org wrote:
> A. It is a matter of interpretation whether a given system can be
> described as a computer running a specified program P
This proposition is definitely false.
It is true that information content is largely observer-dependant, in the
sense that I can choose any scheme I like for mapping physical phenomena to
data. In this sense you could view any complex object as encoding all sorts
of different programs, using many different schemes. However, this does not
imply that any system can be interpreted as 'a computer running a specified
program P'.
The problem lies in the fact that a computer is not a static body of data.
One could view your couch as encoding a complete blueprint for my computer,
but that is not the same thing as actually being one. To qualify as
actually being a computer, your couch must display a certain range of
behaviors in response to environmental stimuli. It has to maintain an
ongoing chain of appropriate, causally connected states while running a
program. The thermal vibrations in your couch are never going to display
this behavior, no matter what encoding scheme you use.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com
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