X-Message-Number: 14956
From: 
Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 13:26:55 EST
Subject: Turing and Pi

If YEGO you will skip this--it's yet another effort to open the eyes of the 
uploaders.

Can a Turing computer (Universal Turing Machine) simulate or emulate a 
sentient (feeling) being?

The Turing computer is digital, sequential, algorithmic, and finite (although 
not necessarily bounded). It has been shown--and in fact I think it is 
self-evident to those with the background--that a Turing computer can "do 
anything" that any digital computer can do--i.e., it could (eventually, in 
principle) produce any desired number, or set of numbers, to any desired 
degree of accuracy.

The memory store can grow without limit, and the program can change also, 
either by self-modification or by allowing random influences such as nuclear 
radiation or cosmic rays. Or, if preferred, one could rule out random 
influences or/and some types of self modification.

The "emulation" supposedly consists of eventual production, from time to 
time, of sets of numbers corresponding (within uncertainty principle limits) 
to the quantum states of a person and (part of) his environment and history, 
past or/and future.

The uploaders believe that if the algorithm or program, with the initial 
store, corresponds closely enough to the laws of nature and some set of 
initial conditions, then there will be (closely enough) a one-to-one 
correspondence or isomorphism between the physical actuality and the 
computer-generated sets of numbers, and that "therefore" there will be a live 
emulation. 

The built-in assumption is that nothing matters except patterns of 
information and the processing of information (or time evolution of patterns 
of information). This assumption has a mild degree of plausibility, but is 
not self-evident and not proven true. But problems remain even if one accept 
some version of the assumption.

As I have pointed out before, ALMOST ALL of the numbers generated in the 
computer represent intermediate calculations or operations of one sort or 
another. The sets corresponding to sequential quantum states of the system 
are distinguished in two ways, at most. One way is by arbitrary labels. 
(Searle might claim that is the only way.) The other is by necessary and 
sufficient relations implied by the laws of nature, and I think this is 
possible--i.e., I think it is possible that one can find semantics inside the 
symbols, without any Rosetta Stone. But that still leaves--at minimum--two 
problems.

The first problem, once again, is binding of space and time. FEELING may (and 
I think probably does) demand a REGION of space and time (possibly some kind 
of standing wave, the self-circuit), not a point or quantum cell. In such 
case, isomorphism will NOT do the trick.

Second is the problem Mike Perry has mentioned, the presumptive existence of 
hidden sets either in the world of physics or the world of Plato or of 
mathematics. If you expand pi in some base, for example, whether base two or 
some prime number, you may eventually get a segment of digits corresponding 
nearly enough to some person and a segment of his environment and history. If 
that segment is written down in some fashion, does or did or will the person 
exist and feel? Will or does he exist or feel even if the numbers are never 
written down? Never discovered? 

At minimum, I think, these considerations cast serious doubt on the uploading 
thesis. In my opinion, they put it heavily on the defensive, making it only a 
long shot.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org     

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