Hacker News Reader

Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

With sufficient compute capacity, a complete physical simulation of a human should be possible. This means that, even though we are fallible, there is nothing that we do which can't be simulated on a Turing machine.

View on HN

Why should a complete simulation be possible? in fact there are plenty of things we can do that can't be simulated on a Turing machine. just one example the Busy Beaver Problem is an uncountable problem for large N, so by definiton is not coumptable and yet humans can prove properties like "BB(n) grows faster than any computable function"

Proving properties and computing values are quite different things, and proofs can absolutely be done on Turing machines, e.g. with proof assistants like Lean.

well you try feeding the Busy Beaver Problem with large N to lean then and see what comes out.

Do you think a machine proof of "BB(n) grows faster than any computable function" would require that?

no, see the problem is that the machine needs a well defined problem, and the "BB(n) grows faster than any defined problem" is well defined but you would not come up with an insight like that by executing the BB(n) function. that insight requires a leap out of the problem into a new area and then sure after it is defined as a new problem you enter again in the computability realm in a different dimension. But if the machine tries to come up with insight like that by executing the BB(n) function it will get stuck in infinite loops.

As long as you take the assumption that the universe is finite, follows a fixed set of laws, and is completely deterministic, then I think it follows (if not perfectly, then at least to a first order) that anything within the universe could be simulated using a theoretical computer, and you could also simulate a smaller universe on a real computer, although a real computer that simulated something of this complexity would be extremely hard to engineer.

It's not entirely clear, though, that the universe is deterministic- our best experiments suggest there is some remaining and relevant nondeterminism.

Turing machines, Goedel incompleteness, Busy Beaver Functions, and (probably) NP problems don't have any relevance to simulating complex phenomena or hard problems in biology.

May still only yield a philosophical zombie. You can simulate gravity but never move something with its simulation.

If I have a 9-DOF sensor in meatspace and am feeding that to a "simulation" that helps a PID coalesce faster then my simulation can move something. When I tell my computer to simulate blackbody radiation...

What you said sounds good, but I don't think it's philosophically robust.

I think you misunderstood my point. A simulation is never the actual simulated phenomenon. When you understand consciousness as a "physical" phenomenon (e.g. as in most forms of panprotopsychism), believing in being able to create it by computation is like believing in being able to generate gravity by computation.

we're out of my wheelhouse but it feels to me that entropy and gravity are fundamentally linked and a quick search shows i'm not alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropic_gravity

read this as: literally creating gravity by simulating it hard enough.

I don't see how computation itself can be a plausible cause here. The physical representation of the computation might be the cause, but the computation itself is not substrate-independent in its possible effect. That is again my point.

I'm arguing with an AI about this too, because my firm belief is that the act of changing a 1 to a 0 in a computer must radiate heat - a 1 is a voltage, it's not an abstract "idea", so that "power" has to go somewhere. It radiates out.

I'm not really arguing with you, i just think if i simulate entropy (entropic processes, "CSRNG", whatever) on my computer ...

I agree and the radiation/physical effect is in my opinion the only possibility a normal computer may somehow be able to cause some kind of consciousness.

wow, we were at an impasse, but somehow i managed to make myself understood. Happy Mardi Gras!

> A simulation is never the actual simulated phenomenon.

That's not obviously true, especially given how the more we keep digging into physics, the more everything seems to be "just information".

Seems to me like wishful thinking. This would require an interface to connect to and there we are most probably in the physical realm again (what we can perceive as such).

To be clear, the topic of philosophical zombies has to do with consciousness.

You can simulate a black hole on a mainframe, but that doesn't mean the math is going to escape and eat your solar system.

We don't know if consciousness is computable, because we don't know what consciousness is.

There are suggestions it isn't even local, never mind Turing-computable.

the heat radiated is entropy and will eventually wind up in a black hole. we missed a step.

The entire p-zombie concept presumes dualism (or something close enough to it that I'm happy to lump it all into the generic category of "requires woo"). Gravity having an effect on something is measurable and provable, whereas qualia are not.

No, panprotopsychism and panpsychism are also very hot contenders. Considering the lack of any examples where computation itself yields measurable effects on reality why should it be the case for consciousness? It's wishful thinking of computer enthusiasts if you ask me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com