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If I simulate a map I get a map. Are minds like maps, or like nuclear reactions?
by danidiaz 9y ago
If I simulate a map I get a map. Are minds like maps, or like nuclear reactions?
- ankurdhama 9y agoI have no idea what you are trying to say. A simulation is about "changes in the state of a system over time". Not sure how you can simulate a map?
- danidiaz 9y agoI meant something like taking a physical map and representing it as bits in the memory of a computer. That's still a map; you can orient yourself with it. I'm just saying that there are things whose simulation is still a thing of the same kind. Perhaps minds are like that. In everyday life, we treat other minds more like "maps" than like "nuclear reactions". We interact with nuclear reactions by getting radiation sickness and dying. We interact with people through more indirect channels. A simulation could be at the other end of the channel and we wouldn't know. Maybe he wouldn't now, either! We don't get electrocuted when our interlocutor's neurons are firing, the effects on us are only through his external behaviour. It's the abstract informational flow what seems to matter.