Hacker News Reader

> In what way can this be proven?

Proven? Nothing in science is ever proven.

But on half a millenium we have failed to find anything that can't be simulated by math, and Turing completeness means a computer can simulate anything that can be simulated by math. We also can simulate all the smallest components of a brain.

At this point the claim that math can not simulate it is highly extraordinary.

View on HN

> Turing completeness means a computer can simulate anything that can be simulated by math

Technically, it is not proven that Turing machines can compute all computable functions, so there is some purely theoretical possibility that the brain could be able to compute functions that a Turing machine can't.

Personally I find that extremely unlikely, and agree that it would be extremely surprising. But it wouldn't invalidate anything we have proven so far.

It would imply that our brains are using currently-unknown physics, since all current theories are computable.

We have not been able to simulate any aspect of subjective, conscious experience using a mathematical model, and personally I think we have no good reason to believe we ever will. The qualitative, by definition, cannot be quantified.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com