Death by the Slow Insertion of Randomness
August 29th, 2007In my post Instatiating a Digital Human I claimed it was necessary for causality to connect the states of a computer simulating a digital human for her to experience consciousness. I claimed that a computer generating random states that just happened to mimic a computer simulating the digital human, would not generate an experienced consciousness. Here a present a counter-argument.
Firstly we assume that our algorithm that simulates the digital human is reasonable resilient to errors. Imagine that after each propagation step we introduce a small amount of noise into the simulation (i.e. we replace a small number of the bits by random bits). Since our algorithm is resilient our digital human doesn’t die but just becomes very slightly dopier. As we introduce more and more randomness she will gradually become more senile until eventually she ceases to be conscious.
Now imagine this same situation, where the random bits we introduce, just by chance happen to be the same as the bits they are replacing. In the limit where we replace all the bits, this is simply the example mentioned earlier of a randomly generated set of states that happen to mimic a digital human, thus we proscribe no consciousness. However, we can go in a continuous manner from this entirely random digital human, to the entirely deterministic digital human, simply by reducing the number of bits that are randomised. To the entirely deterministic digital human we proscribe consciousness. What then do we proscribe to the simulations that lie in between? Does some lesser form of consciousness exist? It makes me very suspicious of my earlier argument.
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