X-Message-Number: 8091
Date:  Wed, 16 Apr 97 22:32:37 
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: CRYONICS Re: CryoNet #8080 - #8083

Bob Ettinger (#8080) wrote:
>
> Searle's Chinese Room example fails to convince the die-hard info people that
> the room as a whole doesn't understand Chinese. However, let's focus on
> feeling rather than "understanding, [...]

The Chinese Room example doesn't convince me that the "room as a 
whole" *or some system emulated by the room as a whole* doesn't 
understand Chinese. Bob then asks us to consider a similar system that 
emulates a system with feeling but is made up of components that, at 
the basic level, do not experience this feeling. (In this case the 
system consists of a person making marks on paper according to
specified, fixed rules, who has no remote idea of what it is all "adding
up to.") Of course this process could be exceedingly slow in compar-
ison to the original. It can also be put on hold for an indefinite period,
then resumed. You could say the same things about us right now too,
if we are in such an emulation in some giant system run by
advanced beings. We don't know we aren't.

As far as I am concerned, if beings with feeling are
emulated, then the emulated beings have feeling too. In particular I
should be able, through an appropriate hookup, to interact with
such beings, to communicate. I could observe their reactions in great
detail (including internal processes) and that, I think, would further
convince me that they truly had feeling, as much as I myself could
be said to have it.

I am just a stack of atoms engaged in a certain process. Individual 
atoms, we usually say, don't have feeling. Yet the whole system (in 
this case 10^28 or so atoms to make up a whole person) does. That
system too might be put on hold--through cryopreservation, for
instance. Another possibility is that I could be vaporized, but some
time later a lucky accident restores the same kinds of atoms in their
proper positions, etc. If that happens, you would have an exact
copy of me starting up again (a resurrected me, I would say)--once
again, a system with feeling. (Note: whether the system has feeling
here is independent of whether you consider this to be a resurrected
original or a similar but different person.)

Bob also raises the question of what
if you make a mistake in your emulation. In that case,
I would say you have ceased to carry out the emulation.
What you now have, and whether you 
have feeling, etc. in the new process depends on circumstances. The 
old process, however, could in principle be resumed again, if you 
went back and corrected the error. (You could resume it more 
than once, creating multiple continuers, etc. A person could 
fission.)

Bob wonders too, how we get around the time problem. Simultaneous 
events in the original may not be simultaneous in the emulation. So 
what? What counts here is what counts to the emulated 
beings. What counts for them is how *they* perceive things, not how 
you may perceive them. If you do the emulation right, they will 
perceive simultaneity where they should, and not where they should 
not. That should be enough.

Basically, the emulation might be thought 
of as a process of creating a succession of descriptions. Each 
description refers to the system being emulated at a particular time. 
Such a description should not have to be constructed instantaneously, 
even though it may describe events that are to happen 
simultaneously. (Due adjustments would be needed for relativity 
too, if you wanted to consider large-scale processes.) You might then 
ask, What is the difference between this and running a movie? One 
difference is that I should be able to interact with the emulation. I 
should be able to communicate with the beings being "run" on the 
system. In that way, I can consider them to be truly "real" in my 
world, even if they are in a strange place operating under strange 
rules.

Bob also says,

> P.S. Old refrain again: Mike Perry and others keep saying that certain
> disagreements represent (just?) different "points of view." This seems to me
> much like "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion." But nobody is entitled
> to a wrong opinion, except in the social or legal sense. Values are NOT
> arbitrary, I contend;

It's hard to see how this would apply, as a general principle, to 
personal preferences. If someone says they personally don't value 
their memories (whereas I value mine) how do I tell them they're 
wrong?

To Doug Skrecky: I think your fly longevity experiments are worth 
doing, even though they may not solve the problem of aging. My advice 
would be to use adequate amounts of controls, and keep writing up and
posting the results.

Thomas Donaldson (#8083) wrote,
> 
> To Mike Perry: You seem to assume that without mathematics a civilization
> must NECESSARILY be behind us. I never said that nor implied it. I am saying
> that they may be so far in advance of us that they have forgotten all of our
> present science and mathematics as the prattling of infants.
> 
I think I understand your position. Also, I'll allow that a 
civilization without mathematics *could*, in some unknown manner, 
have capabilities *and* understanding far beyond ours. (By the same 
token, the Homeric gods could be real.) I doubt it, but I haven't 
proved otherwise. 

> My test for an intelligent civilization (and when you come down to it, this
> bears a lot on what I think of the Turing test, too) is not what they can
> say to us but what they can DO.

If they can walk on water but don't understand why their technique 
works, they aren't necessarily that smart. If, however, they can do
essentially anything we can do, and many things we can't do, and
they don't use anything like our physics or our mathematics, and
can't explain what they do in terms we could understand, e.g. using
our mathematics as a starting point, I would say this is essentially
supernatural. And I do have doubts about the supernatural.

> As for whether or not we will eventually
> forget all of present mathematics, I will say that this is certain to happen.
> But also I expect it to take many thousands of years.

Do you really mean that: "this is certain to happen"? Sounds 
dogmatic.

Endless best to all,
Mike Perry

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