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pmarreck 3 days ago

> Anything that can be computed inside your physical body, can be calculated in an "artificially" constructed replica.

What's hilarious about this argument (besides the fact that it smacks of the map-territory relation fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation) is that for most of my life (53 years), we've been trying not just to simulate a nematode or Drosophila (two of the most-studied creatures of all time- note that we COMPLETELY understand their nervous systems) and failed to create anything remotely convincing of "life" (note that WE are the SOLE judgers of what is "alive", there is no 100% foolproof mechanistic algorithm to detect "life" (look up the cryptobiosis of tardigrades or wood frogs for an extra challenge)... therein lies part of the problem), but we cannot even convincingly simulate a single cell's behavior in any generous span of time (so for example, using a month to compute 10 seconds of a cell's "life"). And yes, there have been projects attempting to do those things this entire time. You should look them up. Tons of promise, zero delivery.

> Given enough time, we'll create that replica, there's no reason to think otherwise.

Note how structurally similar this is to a "God of the gaps" argument (just substitute "materialism-given-unlimited-time" for "God").

And yet... I agree that we should continue to try. I just think we will discover something interesting in... never succeeding, ever... while you will continue to refer to the "materialism-given-unlimited-time of the gaps" argument, assuming (key word there) that it must be successful. Because there can't possibly be anything else going on. LOL. Naive.

(Side note, but related: I couldn't help noticing that most of the AI doomers are materialist atheists.)