X-Message-Number: 21329
From: 
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 13:57:57 EST
Subject: pi and I

--part1_d.b128efb.2b93ae35_boundary
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Just a couple of quickies on a snowy Sunday. (Below zero predicted for 
tonight. There oughta be a law.)

1. Somewhere I read that the digits of pi are considered to be (possibly) 
random numbers (in base ten or whatever). No, can't be. Says who? Zeno. It 
would be a paradox of continuity. Because it might at first seem plausible 
that the umpteenth digit is random, but what about the first or second or 
third? Any sharp eye can look at a circle and estimate the value of pi to at 
least two decimal places, a sharper eye and brain more digits. So that ratio 
(circumference to diameter) is a definite, fixed quantity (in Euclidean 
space). Of course, for encryption purposes the distant digits of pi might be 
random enough.

2. Mike Perry has a lot of interesting thoughts, but his basic premise 
remains the same and unproven, viz., that "I" (my being and feeling) exist 
essentially in the information content of my brain, or in the evolution of 
that content. He writes in part:

>However, there are other situations we can imagine, in which the frame of 
>reference *is* our own universe, but the entity in question is not, say, a 
>human or animal, but an artificial construct that isomorphically emulates a 
>known sentient creature. In this case, since the frame of reference is our 
>own, I think we would be justified in regarding such a beastie as 
>conscious, in the everyday sense.

Seems pretty clear here that he is saying that a description of a conscious 
brain must itself be conscious. An emulation, after all, is just a 
description, albeit of unusually high fidelity and completeness and perhaps 
dynamic rather than static. In trite but simple words--the map is not the 
territory. Be it as detailed as you like, and updated as often as you like, 
it is still not the territory. Mickey mouse on the screen moves and grimaces, 
but does not think or feel. A running computer "thinks" in some sense but 
does not feel. If future techs at Disney World create a Mickey with a 
functioning quasi-human brain-imitating computer guidance, it could be fully 
intelligent but still could not feel--could not be alive in our sense--unless 
the mechanism for qualia were present. (Possibly a special kind of modulated 
standing wave?) 

No homunculus. The qualia are not properties of the feeling self, they ARE 
the feeling self, or the central portion of it.

The brain might be said roughly to comprise four main elements. (1) 
Housekeeping. (2) Communication (3) Memory and cognition. (4) Feeling. Only 
the last pertains exclusively to personhood and life as we know it. 

A mechanical decoy can look like a duck and walk like a duck and quack like a 
duck but it isn't a duck. If future Disney World techs create a Mickey with a 
computer "brain" that creates appropriate conversation and gesticulation but 
lacks the mechanism of qualia, it will not be a person, even if it outwits 
everybody and takes over the corporation. (The corporation, a legal person, 
will then be owned by a non-person.) A dog or cat or bird, although much less 
intelligent, is a person (and perhaps in some respects more alive than H. 
Sap., with more or different feelings).

And yet again, remember e.g. that dy/dx can be regarded in many ways--as the 
slope of a curve or the speed of a projectile or the rate of charge of a 
capacitor or many, many other things. But one can hardly say that any one 
"is" the other. A description or representation or rendering or simulation 
has to be interpreted, and does not automatically entail its own 
interpretation. 

There is also the question of under-simulation and over-simulation. Every 
"emulation" of the foreseeable future will be lacking in something, since we 
will not know everything about the laws of physics and therefore will be 
unable to write programs that fully and exactly represent and predict natural 
systems and events. Also, we could (?) write programs that include just about 
everything now known about people, including particular people, and add to 
that "universe" new or different laws including "magic" capabilities--design 
your own heaven. This may not prove anything in particular, but I think it 
tends to undermine the uploaders.

O.K., it wasn't as quick as I intended. And of no great current 
consequence--except that there is some small value in amusing  each other, if 
we can keep it friendly.

Robert Ettinger






--part1_d.b128efb.2b93ae35_boundary

 Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21329