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Comment by convnet | Hacker News Reader

It's just semantics. A brain is just a "simulation" of a consciousness. Unless you want to bring religion / spirituality into the discussion, there's absolutely nothing to suggest that there's something magical about the human brain that allows it to support a consciousness in a way that a hypothetical man-made computer cannot.

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I see no reason that bringing in simulation should be considered more reasonable than bringing in religion.

In fact, it pretty much boils down to the same thing, as far as I can tell. You have a simulation? Someone set it up. He/she/it is the creator of this universe.

[Edit: I should say that a simulation winds up being the same as a religion, but I'm not sure that a religion necessarily winds up being the same as a simulation.]

That's working on an issue from two different directions. We work towards considering a simulation probable because of what we ourselves are working towards creating.

Stating the cause/creator first and looking for evidence of it is not very reasonable.

We are so far from being able to do any such thing that I take issue with the phrase "working towards creating".

Magical in the sense how radioactivity was magical before it was known. We might be missing something important in our knowledge of universe and once we find it, things might start making sense.

What if our tree of life’s brain is utilizing a type of Quantum Computing?

Considering how much effort is required to just get a handful of qbits in the lab, I find it highly unlikely that we've got heretofore undetected qbits hiding in our (and, presumably every other animal's) nervous systems.

That might be argument like when aluminum was the most expensive element and rich kings had aluminum roofs on their castles, because nobody was able to manufacture it cheaply. We might just be clumsy...

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