[ExI] The second step towards immortality

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 7:01 AM, Ben <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
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> [*]  This is an interesting topic in itself:  When does a theoretical
> possibility become invalid because it's not actually a real possibility?
>  Can you conclude that horses are capable of moving stars because a
> theoretical /big enough/ horse would be able to?  A
> consciousness-simulating lookup table runs into practical problems simply
> because it would have to be bigger than the universe.  Apart from there not
> being enough particles in existence to build it, there are theoretical
> objections to it working anyway, like the speed of light.  So even
> theoretically, it's an invalid thought-experiment.  Or is it?


### A thought experiment is only invalid if the thoughts are invalid, not
when mere material circumstances intervene. Nobody can instantiate a real
Turing machine, nobody can solve the halting problem by running it. But,
still, P does not equal NP - this is a valid hypothesis, in fact one of the
cornerstones of computational complexity theory.

In this tread we deal with a thought experiment - some thinkers propose
that the Turing test is not a valid measure of intelligence because you can
imagine a mindless machine, a GLUT, passing it. It taken on faith that
"mechanical" application of program transformation rules cannot conceivably
give rise to intelligence (argument from incredulity). McDermott points out
that if this GLUT existed, it would have a structure that makes this
argument much weaker - it would actually have to embody an "optimized" (as
he terms it) computational model of a mind, so anybody who agrees that at
least the non-phenomenological aspects of the mind could be generated by a
computational model should reject the GLUT objection to the Turing test.
The size of the GLUT is not relevant to the validity of the argument, as
long as it is finite.

By the way, did you notice how he mentions Searle's room? Not really as a
serious philosophical issue, just an offhand dismissal.

Rafal
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