<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">On Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 12:48 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:</span><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt"> </span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span></span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">You can certainly achieve the same functionally
of voluntary choice with an abstract system. 
But if you define “voluntary”, like you do consciousness: to be a system
that makes decisions with a system implemented directly on physical qualities,
then you are right.  A substrate
independent computer cannot perform “voluntary” actions, per this definition.</span></p></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">I don't understand any of that. If you or I or a computer does X rather than Y there are only 2 possibilities:</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">1) You I and the AI did it for a reason, that is to say we did it because of cause and effect. </font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">2)  <span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">You I and the AI did it for <b>no</b> reason, that is to say we did it randomly.</span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br></font></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4">There are no other possibilities because everything either happens for a reason or it doesn't happen for a reason.</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4"> John K Clark </font></div>
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