[ExI] digital simulations, descriptions and copies

[Gordon Swobe]

--- On Sat, 1/23/10, Eric Messick <eric at m056832107.syzygy.com> wrote:

> Hey, no need to disparage my remarks with the label "religious"!

Sure looks like religion to me!

> Now let's consider a simulated person biting into a
> simulated apple. At some level, the apple simulation communicates to the
> mouth simulation some information about taste and texture. 
> That information gets translated into simulated sensory neural
> signals.  The brain simulation generates a neural firing pattern based 
> partly on the sensory signals.  The resulting pattern encodes some
> of the same symbols that were activated in your real brain when you
> really bit into an apple.

That "neural firing pattern" amounts to mindless software running on some computer.

> Our simulated person then decides to describe the
> experience in a simulated email, which he sends to a real friend. 
> When the friend reads the (now real) email, she decides that her friend 
> has enjoyed an apple.
> 
> If no one has actually enjoyed an apple, who wrote the
> email?

A program wrote it, one like Eliza (if you remember her) but perhaps smart enough to fool you.

> Or, do you contend that no such email could possibly be produced?

Not at all. My spam filter blocks hundreds of fake emails every day.

-gts