Comment by IAmYourDensity | Hacker News Reader

Comment by IAmYourDensity | Hacker News Reader

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> A simulation is not the process itself.

Sometimes a simulation IS the thing. A simulation of a wall clock IS a functioning clock (e.g. the clock icon on our smartphones). An autopilot that can takeoff, fly, and land an airplane IS a pilot. Chess engines that can beat grandmasters are chess players. A computer simulation of a teacher that can educate students is a teacher. Sometimes these simulations lack some of the capabilities of their human counterparts, and sometimes they far exceed them.

> You would not expect your computer to pee on your desk if you were to simulate kidney function, would you?

You would not reject a computer-controlled dialysis machine as "just a simulation" if you had kidney failure would you?

> You would not reject a computer-controlled dialysis machine as "just a simulation" if you had kidney failure would you?

Except that's not a simulation, that's the actual process of dialysis in action (which we fully understand, contrary to consciousness). And coincidentally, a dialysis machine _does not_ look like a kidney, not even remotely, and any homomorphism one can point to, is such only through a great deal of layers of abstraction. I would totally reject a simulation of a kidney.

We are talking about a computer simulation like a neural network. We detect topological relationships in neurons and we are led to believe or entertain the possibility that all there is to it is such topological description, hence any substrate will do. This is completely arbitrary and leads to all sort of phantasies such as "qualities emerge from quantities" and "a simulation of a brain behaves like a brain". A computer simulation of a kidney won't produce urine just like a simulation of a brain won't produce whatever the brain produces, if anything.

Now, to build on your dialysis machine analogy, if we were to understand how consciousness work, and if we were to understand what relationships it holds with the brain and the body, then I submit that anything artificial we will produce will look like biology.

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