[ExI] The digital nature of brains

Gordon Swobe gts_2000 at yahoo.com
Sat Jan 23 23:16:12 UTC 2010


--- On Sat, 1/23/10, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:

> And you still don't seem to acknowledge that an *emulation*
> is something that *produces the same result as something it
> is mimicking*, rather than just bearing a superficial
> resemblance.

Depends on what you mean by "result". 

On software/hardware systems we can emulate operating systems and software, and we can emulate hardware. However as I think you've already agreed, we cannot emulate such things as apples. 

We can create simulations of apples and other non-digital objects but we always lose their reality in the process. We end up with only a description of reality. 

Some people with overly vivid imaginations want to believe that digital descriptions of people can really live inside digital descriptions of reality, as if Gandalf really lives in Middle Earth and really smokes a pipe.

-gts




      



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