Some people, like Christof Koch, think that a simulation cannot become conscious. The irony is that only simulations can be conscious. Consciousness is a simulated property of a simulated system.
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Is this about levels of description? Every system ultimately runs on the ground truth transition function, so nothing is a simulation, but if we don't impose functional subsystem-boundaries we're lost -- and yours is: consciousness is computational, substrate is a distraction?
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Many patterns are not part of the ground truth but only emerge from the perspective of an observer, like a glider in a cellular automaton.
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This is blowing my mind, specially when tied with the glider example. If you arrange a set of dominoes to compute whether or not a number is prime: the falling dominoes are the ground truth, the algorithm, number & primality are simulacra? Where can I read more about this view?
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The algorithm can be a causally stringent emergent pattern. A simulacrum usually lacks causal stringency. An emulated computer is functionally a computer, while the simulacrum of a computer only pretends to be one.
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