X-Message-Number: 21355
From: 
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 11:18:45 EST
Subject: emergence and ignorance

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Another effort to clarify a fundamental fallacy of the 
isomorphists/uploaders:

There are different schools of thought in the strong AI and uploading camp, 
but three of them are the following:

1. The most radical--including some very respected names--hold that thinking 
and feeling exist whenever any information processing whatever takes place. A 
thermostat thinks and feels--one of three things: "It's too cool in here," or 
"It's too warm in here," or "It's just right in here." But clearly this 
position is vacuous, since it tells us nothing, predicts nothing, and 
suggests no further investigation. It's just empty words. Or worse than that, 
maybe, if it is interpreted to mean that a fairly sophisticated program is 
close to human and deserving of some degree of respect as a person.

2. Less radical uploaders believe that feeling demands complex programming, 
but not necessarily of any special type. It just "emerges" imperceptibly with 
the sophistication of programming. This is also useless and unacceptable, 
because it is predicated on essential and eternal ignorance. 

3. More conservative uploaders believe that feeling is inherent in a special 
kind of programming, not yet understood, although perhaps understandable in 
principle. If organic systems (we) feel because of (say) a special kind of 
standing wave in the brain, then a symbolic analog of that, in (say) a 
classical digital computer, would also feel. 

Bypassing the many other problems I have mentioned in the past, this position 
merely ASSUMES that if an evolving collection of symbols (of any kind at all) 
is analogous or isomorphic to the physical features of a living person or 
animal, that collection of symbols will have feelings, same as we do. 

Indeed, since the symbols must be concrete--physical marks or objects of some 
kind--then the carrier, i.e. the Turing tape or the classical electronic 
digital computer, or whatever, has feeling. 

This has a certain kind of aesthetic appeal, as Mike Perry has said, but as 
far as I can see, nothing more.   

Robert Ettinger

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