To take a concrete example, the occasional attempts to delineate “real” computation as distinct from mere look-up tables seem to me rather confused and ultimately nonsensical. (Here, for example, is one such attempt, and I commented on another one here.) This strongly suggests deeper problems with the concept, or at least our present understanding of it.
Interestingly, I just searched for some old threads in which I commented on this issue, and I found this comment where you also note that presently we lack any real understanding of what constitutes an “algorithm.” If you’ve found some insight about this in the meantime, I’d be very interested to hear it.
I don’t see that the concept of a computation excludes a lookup table. A lookup table is simply one far end of a spectrum of possible ways to implement some map from inputs to outputs. And if I were writing a program that mapped inputs to outputs, implementing it as a lookup table is at least in principle always one of the options. Even a program that interacted constantly with the environment could be implemented as a lookup table, in principle. In practice, lookup tables can easily become unwieldy. Imagine a chess program implemented as a lookup table that maps each possible state of the board to a move. It would be staggeringly huge. But I don’t see why we wouldn’t consider it a computation.
One of your links concerns the idea that a lookup table couldn’t possibly be conscious. But the topic of consciousness is a kind of mind poison, because it is tied to strong, strong delusions which corrupt everything they touch. Thinking clearly about a topic once consciousness and the self have been attached to it virtually impossible. For example, the topic of fission—of one thing splitting into two—is not a big deal as long as you’re talking about ordinary things like a fork in the road, or a social club splitting into two social clubs. But if we imagine you splitting into two people (via a Star Trek transporter accident or what have you), then all of sudden it becomes very hard to think about clearly. A lot of philosophical energy has been sucked into wrapping our heads around the problem of personal identity.
A lookup table is simply one far end of a spectrum of possible ways to implement some map from inputs to outputs.
Yes. In my view, this continuity is best observed through graph-theoretic properties of various finite state machines that implement the same mapping of inputs to outputs (since every computation that occurs in reality must be in the form of a finite state machine). From this perspective, the lookup table is a very sparse graph with very many nodes, but there’s nothing special about it otherwise.
The reason people are concerned with the concept of consciousness, is that they have terms in their utility functions for the welfare of conscious beings.
If you have some idea how to write out a reasonable utility function without invoking consciousness I’d love to hear it. (Adjust this challenge appropriately if your ethical theory isn’t consequentialist.)
I think it is largely because consciousness is so important to people that it is hard to think straight about it, and about anything tied to it. Similarly, the typical person loves Mom, and if you say bad things about Mom then they’ll have a hard time thinking straight, and so it will be hard for them to dispassionately evaluate statements about Mom. But what this means is that if someone wants to think straight about something, then it’s dangerous to tie it to Mom. Or to consciousness.
Nope, no new insights yet… I agree that this is a problem, or more likely some underlying confusion that we don’t know how to dissolve. It’s on my list of problems to think about, and I always post partial results to LW, so if something’s not on my list of submitted posts, that means I’ve made no progress. :-(
What do you find dubious about the use of this concept on LW?
To take a concrete example, the occasional attempts to delineate “real” computation as distinct from mere look-up tables seem to me rather confused and ultimately nonsensical. (Here, for example, is one such attempt, and I commented on another one here.) This strongly suggests deeper problems with the concept, or at least our present understanding of it.
Interestingly, I just searched for some old threads in which I commented on this issue, and I found this comment where you also note that presently we lack any real understanding of what constitutes an “algorithm.” If you’ve found some insight about this in the meantime, I’d be very interested to hear it.
I don’t see that the concept of a computation excludes a lookup table. A lookup table is simply one far end of a spectrum of possible ways to implement some map from inputs to outputs. And if I were writing a program that mapped inputs to outputs, implementing it as a lookup table is at least in principle always one of the options. Even a program that interacted constantly with the environment could be implemented as a lookup table, in principle. In practice, lookup tables can easily become unwieldy. Imagine a chess program implemented as a lookup table that maps each possible state of the board to a move. It would be staggeringly huge. But I don’t see why we wouldn’t consider it a computation.
One of your links concerns the idea that a lookup table couldn’t possibly be conscious. But the topic of consciousness is a kind of mind poison, because it is tied to strong, strong delusions which corrupt everything they touch. Thinking clearly about a topic once consciousness and the self have been attached to it virtually impossible. For example, the topic of fission—of one thing splitting into two—is not a big deal as long as you’re talking about ordinary things like a fork in the road, or a social club splitting into two social clubs. But if we imagine you splitting into two people (via a Star Trek transporter accident or what have you), then all of sudden it becomes very hard to think about clearly. A lot of philosophical energy has been sucked into wrapping our heads around the problem of personal identity.
Yes. In my view, this continuity is best observed through graph-theoretic properties of various finite state machines that implement the same mapping of inputs to outputs (since every computation that occurs in reality must be in the form of a finite state machine). From this perspective, the lookup table is a very sparse graph with very many nodes, but there’s nothing special about it otherwise.
The reason people are concerned with the concept of consciousness, is that they have terms in their utility functions for the welfare of conscious beings.
If you have some idea how to write out a reasonable utility function without invoking consciousness I’d love to hear it. (Adjust this challenge appropriately if your ethical theory isn’t consequentialist.)
I think it is largely because consciousness is so important to people that it is hard to think straight about it, and about anything tied to it. Similarly, the typical person loves Mom, and if you say bad things about Mom then they’ll have a hard time thinking straight, and so it will be hard for them to dispassionately evaluate statements about Mom. But what this means is that if someone wants to think straight about something, then it’s dangerous to tie it to Mom. Or to consciousness.
Nope, no new insights yet… I agree that this is a problem, or more likely some underlying confusion that we don’t know how to dissolve. It’s on my list of problems to think about, and I always post partial results to LW, so if something’s not on my list of submitted posts, that means I’ve made no progress. :-(