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Ultimately the claim is computation = things = humans. If everything is a computation then humans have no more value or uniqueness than a thunderstorm. This is
by sgt101 4y ago
Ultimately the claim is computation = things = humans. If everything is a computation then humans have no more value or uniqueness than a thunderstorm. This is sinister and pernicious.
1) We can & should differentiate between different classes of things like life, intelligent life and physical processes. This stops us from being cruel to things that experience suffering.
2) We may not be able to perceive or adequately describe classes of non computational processes that operate in our physical universe. This would not be a shock, after all, dogs can't do relativity and yet that does not exempt them from living in space time. Yet, we know that non computational processes do exist in theory. The claim "everything in the universe is a computer" is just that - a claim. It's up to people who believe it to show that every physical process that there is can be replicated using a computer... and that's not been done. To do it you need to enumerate the processes (which requires a competent theory of physics - not one that can't describe 98% of observed things), and you need to show that they can all be computed. We can't do the second thing because we can't even write down descriptions of intelligence and consciousness let alone compute them.
So, dangerous and unfounded. Dislike.
- strogonoff 4y agoBelief in mind-body dualism strikes me as the only reason to reject the possibility that seemingly external and inanimate physical processes and human consciousness are fundamentally the same. If you worry that suspending this belief would rob humans of consciousness (free will, etc.) and “lower” them to the level of “things”, note that you can instead “lift” those externals by granting them the relevant qualities, just expressed at sufficiently different/foreign scales so that human mind is unable to easily grasp the equivalence within its framework of perceived space-time.
- plutonorm 4y agoagree - there is so much ego around when things like this are discussed. It is very frustrating.
- strogonoff 4y agoI mean, this ego might be warranted to some degree. At least (and I don’t know if you would call this an ego-driven argument), consciousness is something I can be sure definitely exists, considering that anything one could call “reality” is only accessible via consciousness (and obviously tainted and possibly constructed to an unknowable extent by it). So, I understand the reluctance to accept a philosophical position that downgrades consciousness to something illusory, as physicalist positions tend to. (If that’s what the comment I responded to expressed, then I’m the same in that regard.) I just think that it’s easy to miss the availability of non-dualist takes that don’t require such a downgrade, and unless I missed something (am yet to read it carefully) this article doesn’t seem to require it either, which would be refreshing.
- plutonorm 4y agoI was agreeing with you.
- sgt101 4y agoI can think of other reasons. - moral: equating inanimate processes and living processes means that you equate their same moral status. - rationality : conscious processes behave differently in that they anticipate conditions and the behaviour of other processes. For example trees (at the bottom end of a scale of awareness) shed their leaves in the autumn in anticipation of frosts to come. The weather does not adapt to trees. - utilitarian: physical processes don't remember you, humans will. If you strike an inanimate process, or burn it, or electrocute it and then return to it weeks later do not fear. If you do the same to a human, or a dog, or an elephant, I advise you to be cautious.
- strogonoff 4y agoI assume then your answer to my veiled question is yes, you do subscribe to mind-body dualism. Again, if I equate moral status of human consciousness to that of inanimate things, it does not need to mean I am downgrading the former as opposed to upgrading the latter. I don’t really accept physicalism myself (but neither I do dualism). I also think you have missed the part regarding wildly different or simply foreign scales. Weather adapting to trees may just be like you adapting to an earthworm while driving a car. Striking a stone, no more than a fly briefly landing on you. Bad analogies but I can’t think of a better one in the moment. I suggest not to take it literally (stones are living, hahah) but analyze it philosophically. To a degree this may require accepting that the model of reality and three-dimensional space/time accessible to human mind may always be fragmentary and incomplete, optimized towards fitness and survival at human timescales.
- nathias 4y agoThis is the worst top comment I've seen on hn in a long time. The text isn't about the computational equivalence but about how vastly different aliens and therefore their tech is, and how the effort of translating alien tech into our own would be equivalent to inventing it ourselves. This point of vast differences requires Wolffram's ontology, which I don't philosophically agree with, but it's as good as any current one. As for the first point, it is actually insane. You don't start being cruel to animals because you are doing ontology.
- throwaway290 4y agoSadly, philosophy can and (whether they should or not) certain philosophical positions do apparently make it acceptable to hurt others. It doesn't make it legal, but it can make it ethically inconsequential and render relevant laws as nonsensical in the eye of the holder of such views. See A Glitch in the Matrix, for example.
- nathias 4y agoFirst of all I know what you mean, and I disagree, but this isn't the issue at all. Ontology talkes about being qua being on the largest possible abstraction, so saying that merely making abstraction somehow implies whatever is beyond idiotic.
- sentirism 4y agoI will freely admit that Wolfram's thoughts are over my head and there are very few thoughts that fall into this category. I imagine many are in the same boat, if they admit it or not. I also imagine that Wolfram isn't the best at compressing his ideas into a form that is easier to digest for those of us of more average intelligence.