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What about a hypothetical brain simulator? That would also be a software/hardware mash, with known mathematics. Would that be alive?

• smoldesu 3y ago
  Now that's a better question! My verdict is no, but I could see where people might disagree. This is a much harder hypothetical, though. Assuming you get everything right, you'd have a pretty powerful simulation at-hand. I think what you're describing is the difference between an artificial lung and a real-life cloned sheep embryo, though. An iron lung is only alive in the sense that it simulates a complex biological process with technology. It's damn impressive and very capable, but living respiration looks and behaves differently. Just simulating the desired input and output won't give you de-facto biology.
  • lordnacho 3y ago
    But a brain sim wouldn't be an artificial lung, would it? Much like an artificial heart wouldn't tell you about the state of the valves because it's an entirely different design that satisfies the same purpose. A simulation tries to do what the original does though. For instance a GameBoy emulator actually runs code in the way the original device did, right? Perhaps the test here is a bit like the Turing test. Could you tell whether the artificial device was being used, or the actual thing, apart from examining the device, of course: - An artificial lung doesn't make people breathe in quite the same way I suspect. - An artificial brain would give answers a bit like what ChatGPT can already do.