Suppose I define myself otherwise, identifying only with my mind rather than body. Would there any reason to argue your definition is better?
And before anyone tries to remind me that the mind isn’t separate from the body—consider that it’s still useful to talk about computer programs as computer programs, separately from the hardware that runs them, even though these programs cannot run except on hardware.
Most computer programs are not very platform specific, and so hardware is whatever approximation to a Turing machine you have handy. But if code is embedded in a platform- to the point that it will not run on any other platform- how meaningful is it to discuss the difference between software and hardware?
My mental experience is of being a body, and so it’s not clear to me what it would be to exist purely mentally.
I meant that in an engineering sense, not a theoretical one, and deliberately moved from “computer program” to “code.” If I have Lisp code that I want to run, and all I can run it in is C, it’s not going to work. To get it to work, it’s often easier to write a Lisp interpreter in C and use the old code than rewrite the code myself. And that’s two languages intended to be used by humans and operate on silicon substrates with binary logic.
And so, can you write a ‘human interpreter’ on silicon with binary logic? Theoretically, sure. Practically, there might not be enough silicon to faithfully emulate it in anything close to realtime. But even if you manage it, you’ve just moved the platform into the realm of software- you haven’t divorced the code and the platform.
My informed but ultimately presumably inaccurate guess is: if I buy about a million or so high end GPUs, and a few hundred petabytes of hard drives, I am somewhere in the ballpark of a human brain.
Given Moores law, that number is going to diminish. Given more knowledge about neurology valuable reductions in simulation complexity will be possible; you probably won’t need a chromodynamics simulation to accurately replicate personality, the thermal noise in our brainware is far too great to depend on that kind of accuracy.
But yes, a human interpreter is ultimately possible because human minds are neuron actvity and neuron activity is physics and physics are as far as we know, turing computable.
Either way, what I’m trying to argue against is the “you are an organism” thing. Not “everything within my skin” is necessary to run the program, I mean surely not the colon or metatarsal bones? To me it makes little more sense to call the entire body “me” than my car. Either way it’s a vehicle, even if at the present state of technology I’m kind of stuck with this one.
I suspect that when we, in a hurry to signal allegiance to reductionism and materialism, tell people things like “you are an organism” (or even “you are a brain”, unless a proper explanation follows), many among those listeners who are actually interested in truth (rather than just in absorbing acceptable beliefs of the Tribe of Scientifically Literate) will reasonably feel there’s something not quite right about this, that it dismisses something that’s actually important. They might not say so, being ashamed of possibly being seen as believing in souls or some other silly nonphysicalism, but it will still not ring true to them.
So I think getting this right matters. Otherwise we’re helping fuel the resistance to reductionism among the unconvinced.
Suppose I define myself otherwise, identifying only with my mind rather than body. Would there any reason to argue your definition is better?
And before anyone tries to remind me that the mind isn’t separate from the body—consider that it’s still useful to talk about computer programs as computer programs, separately from the hardware that runs them, even though these programs cannot run except on hardware.
Most computer programs are not very platform specific, and so hardware is whatever approximation to a Turing machine you have handy. But if code is embedded in a platform- to the point that it will not run on any other platform- how meaningful is it to discuss the difference between software and hardware?
My mental experience is of being a body, and so it’s not clear to me what it would be to exist purely mentally.
That’s strikes me as a really big if. I’m not sure if this is even theoretically possible.
I meant that in an engineering sense, not a theoretical one, and deliberately moved from “computer program” to “code.” If I have Lisp code that I want to run, and all I can run it in is C, it’s not going to work. To get it to work, it’s often easier to write a Lisp interpreter in C and use the old code than rewrite the code myself. And that’s two languages intended to be used by humans and operate on silicon substrates with binary logic.
And so, can you write a ‘human interpreter’ on silicon with binary logic? Theoretically, sure. Practically, there might not be enough silicon to faithfully emulate it in anything close to realtime. But even if you manage it, you’ve just moved the platform into the realm of software- you haven’t divorced the code and the platform.
My informed but ultimately presumably inaccurate guess is: if I buy about a million or so high end GPUs, and a few hundred petabytes of hard drives, I am somewhere in the ballpark of a human brain.
Given Moores law, that number is going to diminish. Given more knowledge about neurology valuable reductions in simulation complexity will be possible; you probably won’t need a chromodynamics simulation to accurately replicate personality, the thermal noise in our brainware is far too great to depend on that kind of accuracy.
But yes, a human interpreter is ultimately possible because human minds are neuron actvity and neuron activity is physics and physics are as far as we know, turing computable.
That’s what I think, too.
Either way, what I’m trying to argue against is the “you are an organism” thing. Not “everything within my skin” is necessary to run the program, I mean surely not the colon or metatarsal bones? To me it makes little more sense to call the entire body “me” than my car. Either way it’s a vehicle, even if at the present state of technology I’m kind of stuck with this one.
I suspect that when we, in a hurry to signal allegiance to reductionism and materialism, tell people things like “you are an organism” (or even “you are a brain”, unless a proper explanation follows), many among those listeners who are actually interested in truth (rather than just in absorbing acceptable beliefs of the Tribe of Scientifically Literate) will reasonably feel there’s something not quite right about this, that it dismisses something that’s actually important. They might not say so, being ashamed of possibly being seen as believing in souls or some other silly nonphysicalism, but it will still not ring true to them.
So I think getting this right matters. Otherwise we’re helping fuel the resistance to reductionism among the unconvinced.
I’m actually sure it is not theoretically possible.