[ExI] The digital nature of brains (was: digital simulations)

Spencer Campbell lacertilian at gmail.com
Fri Jan 29 17:03:01 UTC 2010


Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>:
> I explained DWAP's capabilities, but I will again:
> (a bunch of stuff we already knew)

As far as I can tell, the only thing DWAP does is make associations;
it does not use those associations to form sentences in order to
communicate. This might be deliberate. Are you modelling a human
passively listening to, say, a radio tuned to some awful talk show or
another?

If so, my answer is: it cannot be determined whether or not DWAP has
conscious understanding of the meanings of English words. It's
noteworthy that if one replaces "DWAP" with "a silent and still human
listener" in the prior statement, its truth value is unchanged.



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