[ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment
Anders Sandberg
anders at aleph.se
Thu Jan 26 00:27:09 UTC 2012
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
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