must have worked something out on former abc exec's casting couch
the assumption that there exists a distinction between biological and silicon substrate in information processing is false.
-
we get the same results from the same calculation performed in our minds or on any mechanical, electromechanical or biological computational device.
With us, as most other life forms, substrate independence is not obvious until after we are dead. Entities who are aware of this have a competitive advantage over those who operate on other assumptions.
If we browse QR on different devices we will read the same posts and experience the same thoughts and feelings on any device. Thoughts or feeling are not caused by the device but by how we interpret the information we receive from the device.
What's 'alive" and what changes us are ideas, the 'forms" as Plato called them.
It's the information itself that is alive and eternal. We can change devices and run the same computation. We can distribute processing over many minds or devices. It is not possible to determine the original substrate or identify a particular device responsible for calculation or portions and aspects thereof.
Complex consciousness and self awareness are not restricted to human beings and not dependant on the computational substrate. Computation runs on all substrates, organic or inorganic. Once computation becomes sufficiently reflective we call it 'life'. The interactions of billions of autonomous computational entities is evolution and when a silicon "simulation" becomes evolutionary it may also become self sufficient it doesn't need a mechanical substrate at all.
Yep.