[ExI] Semiotics and Computability

[Gordon Swobe]

--- On Thu, 2/11/10, Spencer Campbell <lacertilian at gmail.com> wrote:

>> I don't play video games myself but I've known
>> children who did. They often spoke of the characters in
>> their video games as if those characters really existed as
>> conscious entities. Then they matured.
> 
> Exactly the same argument applies to characters in movies.

Yes indeed. The characters you see on the silver screen, or on your TV screen or on your computer monitor, have no more consciousness than do the characters you see in video games and comic books. And they have no more consciousness than will the characters we might one day create with perfect digital simulations of humans and their brains.

Such digital simulations of humans will exist only as mere hi-tech movies of real or imaginary people, as mere models of real or imaginary people, as mere animations of real or imaginary people, as mere caricatures of real or imaginary people, as mere descriptions of real or imaginary people. 

No matter whether we create those simulations with real or imaginary persons in mind, the simulations themselves will have no more reality than does Fred Flintstone. 

Yabadabadoo.

-gts