And humans are not just a series of numbers?
There's an assumption that consciousness is just a series of numbers, and some more or less credible philosophical arguments for/against this point of view.
But believing there's more than that is faith-based, not empirical.
The Bekenstein Bound says that any finite volume of space must contain finite information. Finite information can be fully encoded as a number. Ergo, human consciousness is a number.
So unless you're going to suggest that the Bekenstein Bound has no empirical support, which would be a pretty wild claim, then yes, there is indeed empirical evidence that consciousness is just a number.
That would be "many numbers" not "a number." So many numbers that it's possible no digital machine can simulate it.
A distinction without a difference, honestly. Your computer conceptually has "many numbers", but its addressable storage is finite, and so is really just one big number.
> So many numbers that it's possible no digital machine can simulate it.
The very fact that the brain exists is proof that a machine of this size fully mimicking the brain's capabilities is feasible. Encoding information digitally is at best a constant factor difference from other numerical bases.
And this is assuming a quantum-level reproduction, which very likely isn't necessary.
The mind isnt a closed system unless it's drawn as lightcurves.