> what is special about life that makes it unrepresentable with physics absolutely nothing > The physics consciousness relies upon is fundamentally uncomputab

> what is special about life that makes it unrepresentable with physics absolutely nothing > The physics consciousness relies upon is fundamentally uncomputable This would be "huge if true", but I don't think it is. At least I haven't seen any indication of why it would be. > Consciousness _is_ computable and all the weird consequences that follow I think this is true, and I think the weirdness is a result of misunderstandings on our part (we are notoriously bad when reasoning about systems that contain us in some way). > What are your thoughts on why a simulation cannot be conscious? I think this whole consciousness confusion is due to mixing levels of abstraction on our part. Replace consciousness with other higher-level cognitive or social functions, like "love" or "patriotism", and see how silly it sounds. Is "love" computable? Can "loyalty" be reduced to physics? Yes, but the concept makes sense on a whole different conceptual level, which would be silly to reduce to, say, quantum physics, and is much better to reason about at the right abstraction level.