As I understood it, your objection was that computation is an abstraction/compression of the real thing, which is not the same as the real thing. (Is that correct?)
First, let’s check how important is the “compression” part. Imagine that someone would emulate your brain and body without compression—in a huge computer the size of the Moon, faithfully, particle by particle, including whatever quantum effects are necessary (for the sake of thought experiment, let’s assume that it is possible). Would such simulation be you in some sense?
If we get that out of the way, I think that the part about compression was addressed. Lossy compression loses some information, but the argument was that consciousness is implemented in a robust way, and can survive some noise. Too much noise would ruin it. On the other hand, individual neurons die every day, so it seems like a quantitative question: it’s not whether the simulation would be you, but how much would the simulation be you. Maybe simulating 50% of the neurons could still be 99% you, although this is just a speculation.
As I understood it, your objection was that computation is an abstraction/compression of the real thing, which is not the same as the real thing. (Is that correct?)
First, let’s check how important is the “compression” part. Imagine that someone would emulate your brain and body without compression—in a huge computer the size of the Moon, faithfully, particle by particle, including whatever quantum effects are necessary (for the sake of thought experiment, let’s assume that it is possible). Would such simulation be you in some sense?
If we get that out of the way, I think that the part about compression was addressed. Lossy compression loses some information, but the argument was that consciousness is implemented in a robust way, and can survive some noise. Too much noise would ruin it. On the other hand, individual neurons die every day, so it seems like a quantitative question: it’s not whether the simulation would be you, but how much would the simulation be you. Maybe simulating 50% of the neurons could still be 99% you, although this is just a speculation.