X-Message-Number: 22384
From: 
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 08:59:01 EDT
Subject: clarification

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Allan Randall writes in part:

>Why is it dogma for others to believe that a simulation could actually 
*be* a person, and not dogma for you to believe that it *cannot* be? <

Mr. Randall was a little careless. What I said--as he himself quoted--was:

>>Also, as I have said many times with many
>examples, a running computer simulation is NOT fully isomorphic to a 
>person, and
>cannot be.<<

In other words, I didn't say, and never have said, that a simulation 

absolutely could not be a person, even a particular person. I have said I am 
extremely 
skeptical of this, with several stated reasons, and if there is a burden of 
proof it is on the other side. The gist of their argument boils down to the 

assertion that a simulation can have "reasonably" good or "good enough" fidelity
to the original, but this doesn't cut it.

As to why the simulation cannot be fully isomorphic, I have explained this 
repeatedly too. Any computer system has many features lacking in a brain, and 
conversely. The correspondence cannot be one-to-one.

And it might not hurt to repeat the reminder that a computer system can in 
essence be regarded as the realization or embodiment of a formal system, and a 
formal system *never stands alone*--it always requires interpretation in a 
metasystem. The real world stands alone; a computer simulation cannot.

Robert Ettinger

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