I wonder if a lossy emulation might feel like/act like a human with a slightly altered brain chemistry. We have lots of examples of what it’s like to have your neurons operating abnormally, due to emotion, tiredness, alcohol, other chemicals, etc etc. I’m not sure “uncanny valley” is the best term to capture that.
But I think those are examples of neurons operating normally, not abnormally. Even in the case of mind-influencing drugs, mostly the drugs just affect the brain on its own terms by altering various neurotransmitter levels. On the other hand, a low-level emulation glitch could distort the very rules by which information is processed in the brain.
Note that I am distinguishing “design shortcomings” from “bugs” here.
I don’t quite see how you’d get “the overall rules” wrong. I figure standard software engineering is all that’s required to make sure that the low-level pieces are put together properly. Possibly this is just a failure of imagination on my part, but I can’t think of an example of a defect that is more pervasive than “we got the neuron/axion model wrong.” And if you’re emulating at the neuron level or below, I’d figure that an emulation shortcoming would look exactly like altering neural behavior.
I wonder if a lossy emulation might feel like/act like a human with a slightly altered brain chemistry. We have lots of examples of what it’s like to have your neurons operating abnormally, due to emotion, tiredness, alcohol, other chemicals, etc etc. I’m not sure “uncanny valley” is the best term to capture that.
But I think those are examples of neurons operating normally, not abnormally. Even in the case of mind-influencing drugs, mostly the drugs just affect the brain on its own terms by altering various neurotransmitter levels. On the other hand, a low-level emulation glitch could distort the very rules by which information is processed in the brain.
Note that I am distinguishing “design shortcomings” from “bugs” here.
I don’t quite see how you’d get “the overall rules” wrong. I figure standard software engineering is all that’s required to make sure that the low-level pieces are put together properly. Possibly this is just a failure of imagination on my part, but I can’t think of an example of a defect that is more pervasive than “we got the neuron/axion model wrong.” And if you’re emulating at the neuron level or below, I’d figure that an emulation shortcoming would look exactly like altering neural behavior.