The linked essay is a bit long for me to read right now, but I promise to do so within the weekend.
As to your particular example, the problem is I can also think an even more ridiculously impractical thought experiment: one in which more and more of that computer’s computational activity is in turn delegated to a group of abacus-using monks—and then it doesn’t seem plausible for my conscious experience to keep on persisting, when the monks end up being the ones doing all the work...
It’s the bullet I’m not yet prepared to bite—but if do end up doing so, despite all my intuition telling me no, that’ll be the point where I’ll also have to believe Tegmark IV. P(Tegmark IV|consciousness can persist in the manipulations of abacci)~=99% for me...
The linked essay is a bit long for me to read right now, but I promise to do so within the weekend.
As to your particular example, the problem is I can also think an even more ridiculously impractical thought experiment: one in which more and more of that computer’s computational activity is in turn delegated to a group of abacus-using monks—and then it doesn’t seem plausible for my conscious experience to keep on persisting, when the monks end up being the ones doing all the work...
It’s the bullet I’m not yet prepared to bite—but if do end up doing so, despite all my intuition telling me no, that’ll be the point where I’ll also have to believe Tegmark IV. P(Tegmark IV|consciousness can persist in the manipulations of abacci)~=99% for me...