The linked article is kind of confused, but I don’t know how to answer the general argument, which is related to “Dust Theory”. If there is a computer program that you can run which will be conscious—call it “Program Dave”—there’s a snag you can run into. For any random bit string you give me, I can design a “computer” that, when it “runs” that bit string as a program, it will interpret the bit string as being Program Dave. There’s no obvious way to look at something and tell if it’s “really” a copy of Program Dave or not, because everything is a copy of Program Dave if you look at it the right way.
Ve came into existence whenever a computation isomorphic to verself was performed.
That seems to trivially follow. It also seems to just push the burden of reduction onto “performed”.
Yes, that’s a big problem.
The linked article is kind of confused, but I don’t know how to answer the general argument, which is related to “Dust Theory”. If there is a computer program that you can run which will be conscious—call it “Program Dave”—there’s a snag you can run into. For any random bit string you give me, I can design a “computer” that, when it “runs” that bit string as a program, it will interpret the bit string as being Program Dave. There’s no obvious way to look at something and tell if it’s “really” a copy of Program Dave or not, because everything is a copy of Program Dave if you look at it the right way.
See also.