3 ms·

If you were exploring how a new CPU works would you assume any fields were generated by the obvious input power provided by a plug leading to the wall or would

If you were exploring how a new CPU works would you assume any fields were generated by the obvious input power provided by a plug leading to the wall or would you start with the hypothesis that despite having an obvious way to conduct electricity and connection to a source of same it was likely the result of a heretofore unknown field of low energy particles that have somehow not be discovered by physicists despite centuries of looking. If you gave someone who understood electricity but not computation a CPU they wouldn't be able to explain how it works. That wouldn't provide a good reason to say that computation must be the result of something other than electricity.

goatlover 5y ago
> If you gave someone who understood electricity but not computation a CPU they wouldn't be able to explain how it works. That wouldn't provide a good reason to say that computation must be the result of something other than electricity. It would be a good reason to suppose that computation was something added culturally to understanding the CPU (as part of constructing a CPU), since physics alone doesn't explain it. The computation is something in addition to the physics. It's cultural (the meaning of the computation in terms of bit patterns, manipulations and input/outputs) as well as electrical. Otherwise, it's just moving electricity around and producing heat. http://www.jaronlanier.com/zombie.html http://www.jaronlanier.com/zombie.html
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Computation is fully explicable as an abstraction over moving electricity around and producing heat. Without a specific theory of computation understanding the CPU isn't impossible but it may prove intractable in the same fashion as its very difficult but not impossible to understand chemistry solely in terms of physics. What is missing would not be a magical compute field but the necessary abstractions.

goatlover 5y ago

> If you gave someone who understood electricity but not computation a CPU they wouldn't be able to explain how it works. That wouldn't provide a good reason to say that computation must be the result of something other than electricity. It would be a good reason to suppose that computation was something added culturally to understanding the CPU (as part of constructing a CPU), since physics alone doesn't explain it. The computation is something in addition to the physics. It's cultural (the meaning of the computation in terms of bit patterns, manipulations and input/outputs) as well as electrical. Otherwise, it's just moving electricity around and producing heat. http://www.jaronlanier.com/zombie.html http://www.jaronlanier.com/zombie.html

michaelmrose 5y ago
Computation is fully explicable as an abstraction over moving electricity around and producing heat. Without a specific theory of computation understanding the CPU isn't impossible but it may prove intractable in the same fashion as its very difficult but not impossible to understand chemistry solely in terms of physics. What is missing would not be a magical compute field but the necessary abstractions.