[extropy-chat] Fragmentation of computations

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 3/27/07, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/27/07, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Similarly, if computations can be self-aware, then self-aware
> > computations must be lurking all around us in noise, perhaps in elaborate
> > virtual worlds, but never able to interact in any way with the substrate of
> > their implementation. The only way to avoid this strange idea is to say that
> > computations can't be self-aware.
> >
>
> Well as I said I think there are two approaches to this idea, the
> Platonist one which embraces it in terms of the Tegmark multiverse, and the
> Popperian one which bypasses it as irrelevant where there isn't any way to
> interact with the purported entities. Nor do these contradict each other;
> it's perfectly possible to be a Platonist when wearing a philosopher's hat,
> and a Popperian for purposes of making actual decisions.
>

That summarises it very well.

Stathis Papaioannou
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070327/3c0e4d00/attachment.html>