[ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment

[Anders Sandberg]

On 25/01/2012 19:25, natasha at natasha.cc wrote:
>
>  Is there not another possible way in which the brain and its 
> functioning could be expanded/extended that does not rely exculsive on 
> computational codes?
>

I think computational codes are universal, so that any form of 
transhuman modification/extension can be seen as modifying the code. 
This is convenient for analysing them. But in practice of course all 
computation is embodied as something - flesh, silicon, nanomachines, 
wood, what have you. And sometimes it might not even be obvious what the 
computation *is* (other than that it is doing what it is doing), in 
which case it might be very hard to re-represent it without making an 
identical copy of the system or a cumbersome element-by-element emulation.

Also, there is ignorance. I don't know what modafinil does to my mind 
computationally when I take a pill, but I can make use of the effects. 
We do not have access to the computational structure of a lot of things 
right now.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University