<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Dec 27, 2009, Gordon Swobe wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">Even if Zeus handed us a concrete example of an artificially constructed machine with strong AI, we could not abstract from careful study of that machine a formal program to run on a software/hardware system that would enable that s/h system to also have strong AI. We would need instead to recreate that machine.</span></blockquote><br></div><div>Well I agree that if you duplicated a conscious machine the copy would be conscious. Of course making a perfect copy of such a complex thing wouldn't be easy; to do so you would need a very long list of instructions specifying which of the 80 elements with a stable isotope you're dealing with, and information on where to obtain such such an atom, and the coordinates of where to move that atom to. There is a name for a list of instructions of that sort, it's called a, it's called a,..., oh damn, it's right on the tip of my tongue, give me a second, ... ah yes now I have it, it's called a PROGRAM.</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div><br></body></html>