Hacker News Reader

Comment by didntreadarticl | Hacker News Reader

Ok so lets say the universe is a giant deterministic* computer calculating its own future one picosecond at a time.

If something acts only due to external forces - a rock rolling down a hill, or a river flowing around some rocks, we say it doesn't have agency.

If something partially acts based on processing/decision making processes running inside its own boundary - like us, or a roomba, we say it has agency.

So it comes down to processing and actions as a result of processing. Doesn't matter whether its deterministic or not.

* = (probably; ultimately it doesnt matter much whether its deterministic or partially random, either way theres no way of finding out the future other than waiting for it to arrive, due to sensitive dependence on initial conditions)

View on HN

The problem with this view is Hilary Putnam's "a rock implements every finite state automata". (Nicely explained, with a rebuttal in [0].)

It's an attractive idea that some thing has agency (or consciousness, or whatever property you want to define) to the extent it does some sort of computation. But then you have to go figure out what it means for something to do that computation. That turns out to be extremely difficult; most things can be interpreted as computing most other things.

[0]: https://philpapers.org/rec/CHADAR

most things can be interpreted as computing most other things

Chalmers paper is behind a paywall but I dont see how your point makes any sense. A rock is not processing anything, an insect or a person or a calculator is. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

The states that Putnam argues are happening inside the rock dont mean anything unless some action results from them. You'll notice I mentioned 'actions as a result of processing' above.

Imagine a beam of light hitting a prism. What comes out on the other side is a Fourier transform of the incoming light. Did the prism do a computation? If you say no, how about if I place photo detectors on the other side and measure the result - did I build a computer that does not do computations?

If its doing something with the result of the photon detectors, then yes I guess its processing the input and taking some action as a result. Bonus points if the incoming beam or light actually means something (e.g. perhaps it varies when something gets in the way). Congratulations you imagined a processor

What if I hook some (very hypothetical) actuators up to the rock?

Surely the /concept/ doesn't depend on us having the tech to make such actuators...

Cmon guys, rocks arent processors, whatever Putnam may say

Unless you're into panpsychism - which I can't discount because although its a ridiculous explanation of consciousness, all the other possible explanations are equally ridiculous

A river flows in one way rather than another because the particles that form the river have momentum one way rather than another. The reason they have this momentum is because the surfaces of the river interact with the air, obstacles, and the rock bed underneath it, and then pass on momentum to internal river particles, which pass on that momentum to other particles, etc. In this way, is the river not processing information regarding things it can directly "observe" about its environment at its surface, as well as the things it has experienced in the past, then processing that information deeper and deeper, until it ultimately leads to a decision on which way the river flows?

Its a complex system but I wouldnt say its processing anything.

I suppose for what I'm calling processing there needs to be some order. Things that do processing (our cells, processors, etc) use energy to keep some order in the system (keep lower entropy than their surroundings by using energy from those surroundings). Whereas the river is just at maximum disorder relative to its surroundings the whole time.

You could make a water computer where water flows through pipes and collects in cups and then the weight of the cups implements AND gates and OR gates and so on. But in that case the order is provided by the pipework and the energy input is whatever gets the water to the top of the system (and maintains the pipework from being worn away over time)

Is a collection of balls falling down a galton board into bins to form a normal distribution a form of processing? How is it materially different than a ball rolling down a hill?

If you draw an imaginary line around the galton board and then if there was some outcome based on the balls falling into bins (the weight of the bins makes some other thing happen ...) then yeah I guess you'd call that a processor. It takes an input coded as balls and produces an output via bin weights. If it could reset itself rather than be a one-shot thing that would help.

I mean I'm not saying it conscious or anything. I'm just saying it has agency, which is to say "it is a thing that does things"

you've constructed a definition where laminar flow doesn't have agency but turbulent flow does.

turbulence = complex system which isnt necessarily the same as processing. But perhaps you could build some sort of processor using turbulence.

Indeed, one of the ways in which someone was trying to prove that Navier-Stokes can't be solved was to build a Turing machine out of turbulent vortices. If it's possible, then an analytic solution to their motion would be equivalent to solving the halting problem.

So a glider in game of life doesnt have agency

but you can build a computer in game of life that has memory and can base its actions on prcoessing and past input

https://www.nicolasloizeau.com/gol-computer

Reply on news.ycombinator.com