No minds doesn’t mean it isn’t interactive. A computer running minecraft shouldn’t count as a “mind”, and people spend hours in minecraft, or in Skyrim, or in Dwarf Fortress… as described, the offer is like minecraft, but “for real”.
Except that you can build a mind in Mindcraft or Dwarf Fortress since they’re Turing-complete, so Unseelie probably wouldn’t let you have them. Maybe I completely misunderstand the intent of the post but “Unseelie’s job is to artificially ensure that the fabricator cannot be used to make a mind; attempts at making any sort of intelligence, whether directly, by making a planet and letting life evolve, or anything else a human mind can come up with, will fail.” seems pretty airtight.
Perhaps you could ask Unseelie to role-play all the parts that would otherwise require minds in games (which would depend on Unseelie’s knowledge of consciousness and minds and its opinion on p-zombies), or ask Unseelie to unalterably embed itself into some Turing-complete game to prevent you from creating minds in it. For that matter, why not just ask it to role-play a doppleganger of Frank as accurately as possible? My guess is that Unseelie won’t produce copies of itself for use in games or Frank-sims because it probably self-identifies as an intelligence and/or mind.
Except that you can build a mind in Mindcraft or Dwarf Fortress since they’re Turing-complete, so Unseelie probably wouldn’t let you have them.
It could prove that no relevant mind is simulatable in the bounded amount of memory in the computer it gives you. This seems perfectly doable, since I don’t think anyone thinks that Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress take the same or more memory than an AI would...
It hasn’t given you a ‘universal Turing machine with unbounded memory’, it has given you a ‘finite-state machine’. Important difference, and this is one of the times it matters.
It hasn’t given you a ‘universal Turing machine with unbounded memory’, it has given you a ‘finite-state machine’. Important difference, and this is one of the times it matters.
Good point, and in that case Unseelie would have to limit what comes out of the nanofabricator to less than what could be reassembled into a more complex machine capable of intelligence. No unbounded numbers of seat cushions or any other type of token that you could use to make a physical tape and manual state machine, no piles of simpler electronic components or small computers that could be networked together.
The way I understood the problem you would be able to build a computer running Minecraft, and Unseelie would prevent you from using that computer to build an intelligence (as opposed to refusing to build a computer). If Unseelie refused to build potentially turing-complete things, that would drastically reduce what you can make, since you could scavenge bits of metal and eventually build a computer yourself. Heck, you could even make a simulation out of rocks.
But regardless of whether you can build a computer—with a miracle nanofabricator, you can do in the real world what you would do in minecraft! Who needs a computer when you can run around building castles and mountains and cities!
No minds doesn’t mean it isn’t interactive. A computer running minecraft shouldn’t count as a “mind”, and people spend hours in minecraft, or in Skyrim, or in Dwarf Fortress… as described, the offer is like minecraft, but “for real”.
Except that you can build a mind in Mindcraft or Dwarf Fortress since they’re Turing-complete, so Unseelie probably wouldn’t let you have them. Maybe I completely misunderstand the intent of the post but “Unseelie’s job is to artificially ensure that the fabricator cannot be used to make a mind; attempts at making any sort of intelligence, whether directly, by making a planet and letting life evolve, or anything else a human mind can come up with, will fail.” seems pretty airtight.
Perhaps you could ask Unseelie to role-play all the parts that would otherwise require minds in games (which would depend on Unseelie’s knowledge of consciousness and minds and its opinion on p-zombies), or ask Unseelie to unalterably embed itself into some Turing-complete game to prevent you from creating minds in it. For that matter, why not just ask it to role-play a doppleganger of Frank as accurately as possible? My guess is that Unseelie won’t produce copies of itself for use in games or Frank-sims because it probably self-identifies as an intelligence and/or mind.
It could prove that no relevant mind is simulatable in the bounded amount of memory in the computer it gives you. This seems perfectly doable, since I don’t think anyone thinks that Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress take the same or more memory than an AI would...
It hasn’t given you a ‘universal Turing machine with unbounded memory’, it has given you a ‘finite-state machine’. Important difference, and this is one of the times it matters.
Good point, and in that case Unseelie would have to limit what comes out of the nanofabricator to less than what could be reassembled into a more complex machine capable of intelligence. No unbounded numbers of seat cushions or any other type of token that you could use to make a physical tape and manual state machine, no piles of simpler electronic components or small computers that could be networked together.
The way I understood the problem you would be able to build a computer running Minecraft, and Unseelie would prevent you from using that computer to build an intelligence (as opposed to refusing to build a computer). If Unseelie refused to build potentially turing-complete things, that would drastically reduce what you can make, since you could scavenge bits of metal and eventually build a computer yourself. Heck, you could even make a simulation out of rocks.
But regardless of whether you can build a computer—with a miracle nanofabricator, you can do in the real world what you would do in minecraft! Who needs a computer when you can run around building castles and mountains and cities!