By Eliezer’s line of reasoning above—that the subjective experience is in the causal change between one state and the ‘next’ then yes, symbols are as good a substrate as any. FWIW, this is how I see things too.
4 years too late but… this is missing the point of both Eliezer and IL. Eliezer/Barbour’s timeless physics has no changing state over time, because there is no time. Both states exist in a timeless configuration space, and the causal connection between them is only inferred. IL is trying to illustrate this leads to some pretty rediculous conclusions—such as that all you have to do is write down the states on a piece of paper, and then viola—you have created conscious beings even though no computation is actually going on.
EDIT: For what it’s worth I think the Barbour’s physics is a mysterious answer that doesn’t actually dissolve any of the questions it purports to solve..
18 months too late, but http://xkcd.com/505/
By Eliezer’s line of reasoning above—that the subjective experience is in the causal change between one state and the ‘next’ then yes, symbols are as good a substrate as any. FWIW, this is how I see things too.
4 years too late but… this is missing the point of both Eliezer and IL. Eliezer/Barbour’s timeless physics has no changing state over time, because there is no time. Both states exist in a timeless configuration space, and the causal connection between them is only inferred. IL is trying to illustrate this leads to some pretty rediculous conclusions—such as that all you have to do is write down the states on a piece of paper, and then viola—you have created conscious beings even though no computation is actually going on.
EDIT: For what it’s worth I think the Barbour’s physics is a mysterious answer that doesn’t actually dissolve any of the questions it purports to solve..