I’m not quite sure what you mean. Computation is a process, not a state (or a configuration of matter). For a physical system to implement a certain computation, it needs to “evolve over time” in a very specific way. You could probably say it’s a series of states that are causally connected in a specific way.
I think the process of computation matters only insofar as we do not know the result of any given computation before performing it.
So say I have performed the torture sim, and say that I have every configuration of the tape listed to a corresponding page of some really long book. Is the computation performed once again if I flip through the book? Or must I physically carry out the computation using some medium (e.g. sea shells)?
To me, it seems that the only difference between the universe before I ran the simulation and the universe after is that I know what occurred in that simulation. The simulation itself, and all of its content (that is, the sequence of states following from the initial state), was already a fact of the universe before I knew about it.
Is the computation performed once again if I flip through the book? Or must I physically carry out the computation using some medium (e.g. sea shells)?
So what is your answer to these questions? Does flipping through the book create torture? And what if you have the algorithm / list of steps / list of tape configurations described in a book before you implement them and run the Turing machine?
I don’t think it “creates torture” any more than saying 2+2=4 “creates” the number 4--or, at least that’s what I think a computationalist is committed to.
If I have some enumeration of the torture sim in hand, but I haven’t performed the computation myself, I have no way of trusting that this enumeration actually corresponds to the torture sim without “checking” the computation. If one thinks that now performing the torture sim on a Turing machine is equivalent to torture, one must also be committed to thinking that checking the validity of the enumeration one already has is equivalent to torture.
But this line of thought seems to imply that the reality of the torture is entirely determined by our state of knowledge about any given step of the turing machine. Which strikes me as absurd. What if one person has checked the computation, and one hasn’t, etc. It’s essentially the same position that ‘4’ doesn’t exist unless we compute it somehow (which, admittedly, isn’t a new idea).
I’m not quite sure what you mean. Computation is a process, not a state (or a configuration of matter). For a physical system to implement a certain computation, it needs to “evolve over time” in a very specific way. You could probably say it’s a series of states that are causally connected in a specific way.
I think the process of computation matters only insofar as we do not know the result of any given computation before performing it.
So say I have performed the torture sim, and say that I have every configuration of the tape listed to a corresponding page of some really long book. Is the computation performed once again if I flip through the book? Or must I physically carry out the computation using some medium (e.g. sea shells)?
To me, it seems that the only difference between the universe before I ran the simulation and the universe after is that I know what occurred in that simulation. The simulation itself, and all of its content (that is, the sequence of states following from the initial state), was already a fact of the universe before I knew about it.
So what is your answer to these questions? Does flipping through the book create torture? And what if you have the algorithm / list of steps / list of tape configurations described in a book before you implement them and run the Turing machine?
I don’t think it “creates torture” any more than saying 2+2=4 “creates” the number 4--or, at least that’s what I think a computationalist is committed to.
If I have some enumeration of the torture sim in hand, but I haven’t performed the computation myself, I have no way of trusting that this enumeration actually corresponds to the torture sim without “checking” the computation. If one thinks that now performing the torture sim on a Turing machine is equivalent to torture, one must also be committed to thinking that checking the validity of the enumeration one already has is equivalent to torture.
But this line of thought seems to imply that the reality of the torture is entirely determined by our state of knowledge about any given step of the turing machine. Which strikes me as absurd. What if one person has checked the computation, and one hasn’t, etc. It’s essentially the same position that ‘4’ doesn’t exist unless we compute it somehow (which, admittedly, isn’t a new idea).