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False equivalence: books are static once printed. Computers use energy to perform calculations. They are not at all static, and fully capable of creating emerge
by esperent 3y ago
False equivalence: books are static once printed. Computers use energy to perform calculations. They are not at all static, and fully capable of creating emergent behavior, where a book is not.
A book can create emergent behavior in a mind that reads it (or a computer that processes it). But without those, it does nothing.
A computer doesn't need to be observed to run. You can press a button, walk away for a few minutes, and come back to find an entirely novel image generated by Stable Diffusion, for example.
Sure, all computers currently require an external person to push the button, perform maintenance, provide electricity, and so on. But that doesn't mean that all computers will always need this.
Meanwhile, all books will always just be static words, because that's what books are.
- rendall 3y agoYour list of how a computer is more like a Universe than a book has three or four items. Now enumerate all the traits that the Universe has that neither a book nor a computer has. Qualia, consciousness, time, gravity, electromagnetism, life, among infinite other differences. The list is literally infinite. The gulf between the Universe and a book is the same magnitude as that between the Universe and a computer. And sure, books are static once printed and need an observer to run, but that doesn't mean books will always need this.
- esperent 3y ago> books are static once printed and need an observer to run, but that doesn't mean books will always need this. You've lost me here. Books don't run. A book is a large amount of organized text. That's the definition of a book. If you changed into into something that could also read the text, it would no longer be just a book.
- rendall 3y ago> You've lost me here. That is disappointing.