[extropy-chat] Role of Observer is not Relevant

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 4/4/07, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 03:09:36PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
> > > Not all circuits can count, it take special ones.
> >
> > ### You evaded the question. What is so special about certain material
> > objects (human brains, ink on paper, certain circuits) that makes
>
> Ink on paper, no, (unless it's one of them fancy inkjet-printed
> electronics which is smart enough to count). Human brains and certain
> circuits,
> yes, because through evolutionary optimization (all smart human artifacts
> are
> causally entangled with said optimization, which is not true for dumb
> objects, man-made, or otherwise) they have evolved to be able to make
> measurements on their environment/tracking certain aspects of state
> (including themselves), which is externally denoted (in your, mine,
> and a fair number of other heads) as "counting" and "numbers".
>

Sorry to keep harping on this, but it is not clear if you are acknowledging
that smart objects are made up of dumb objects, and moreover they might be
made of of dumb objects which have come together in the right configuration
accidentally rather than deliberately. That is actually exactly what the
human brain is: over billions of years, multiple chemical reactions have
occurred completely at random (i.e. there is no designer), and those that
just happen to be better at self-replicating have survived. So although it
seems almost impossible that a car would be thrown together with spare parts
blowing in the wind, it is quite possible if the parts are blowing in the
wind for billions of years.

Stathis Papaioannou
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