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Comment by yters | Hacker News Reader

No one has ever established human intelligence is computable. A number of the problems I mention just have no computable corollary. E.g. As far as computers are concerned there is no such thing as truth. For us humans to make that claim is inherently nonsensical (I.e. Is it true there is no truth?)

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The default position here is that human intelligence is computable, since we have some 7.5 billion biological computers clearly implementing human intelligence. Arguments to the contrary typically rest on a belief in mind-body dualism (popularly disguised as "quantum effects" these days).

I see from another post of yours that you are religious, which is a common personal reason to assume a form of dualism as at least central tenets in the Abrahamic religions seem to require it. Do you see dualism necessary for your position of human intelligence being incomputable, and if so could you reference an argument you would find compelling also for readers whose religion (or lack thereof) does not necessitate dualism?

If you don't see dualism as necessary for the possibility of human intelligence being incomputable, could you open up your thinking on this?

I apologize for being so forward, but I worry some might read your comments without realizing that they might rely on unshared assumptions.

Yes, of course dualism is necessary. You have the causality wrong. I used to be a computational mind person an believe in monism. But the listed reasons have convinced me otherwise. Essentially computation cannot create information. So, if information exists then so does at least one uncomputable process, which obviously implies dualism. Same direction of causality for my religiosity. Since computationalism is untenable, then religion must be true, not visa versa for me.

Also you beg the question right at the beginning of your response.

Please at least read the Wikipedia articles on computability (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computability) and hypercomputation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation) before making arguments like this. There is literally zero evidence that anything in our known universe can perform hypercomputation - and that includes all quantum mechanical effects that we've been able to measure. So the Bayesian prior for human intelligence being computable is somewhere near 100%, and it would take very, very extreme evidence to contradict that.

"Is it true there is no truth?" is not even close to a compelling argument, there are rigorously defined notions of truth within any of the eminently computable logical frameworks that we use.

Humans seem to perform hyper computation all the time. Eg in programming we can decide a whole lot of programs halt. We seem to do something close to Solomonoff induction. Etc. computational presuppositions are the only reason to not find this compelling, and materialism and hard atheism are the only reasons to be committed to computationalism.

No, that's a misunderstanding of what hypercomputation is.

If you can write down or talk yourself through a proof of why a program will halt, you have solved a computable problem. By definition. When you say "we can decide a whole lot of programs halt", you're talking about plain Jane computation.

If you have knowledge that any program that I give you will or will not halt, then you're a hypercomputing oracle for the halting problem, and you can do magic, basically.

There's a world of difference between the two situations. And I'm fairly sure (but not positive) that there's no way for you to prove in finite space and time that you are an oracle for the halting problem.

Edit: for more on that last bit, see https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/19f9/0c34cdda43efdcf0831b2f...

Regarding truth, no program can know if it is consistent, so truth goes right out the window.

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