3 ms·
> We as humans use numbers and algorithms (which are really figures of speech, not things), to explain physical reality, not the other way around. The numbers
by md2020 4y ago
> We as humans use numbers and algorithms (which are really figures of speech, not things), to explain physical reality, not the other way around.
The numbers and algorithms here aren’t what anybody is saying could be sentient. Those numbers and algorithms are representations used to coerce physical objects into doing computation. Processors don’t care about the algorithms you see on your computer screen. So then the questions are “can computation be sentient”, or “are sentient things sentient by way of computation”, and I think that’s much, much harder to answer.
- Barrin92 4y agoI do agree, my point is rather that the question "“can computation be sentient” is trivially answered as, no it cannot. Is a computed brain sentient is like asking, 'is a computed sun hot?'. Computation is a subjective interpretation of a physical process. You don't get wet from a machine that computes the weather. A digital machine and an analog one aren't equivalent merely because their behaviour can both be explained in the same terms. (i.e. computationally). That's not to say by the way you can't make some kind of sentient digital system, just that computation isn't really relevant to answer that question.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoComputation does take energy and precisely modeling the sun would take a lot of it. Makes me wonder: would precisely computing the physics of something hot produce more heat than computing something cold?
- scarmig 4y agoHigher temperature systems tend to have more microstates than lower temperature ones, so it seems like in principle you need less information to encode the state of a cold system than a hot system. I'm not sure how to translate that to the energy cost of computation of that system though.