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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:16:54 ADT
David Honig (honig@alum.mit.edu)
Tue, 07 Apr 1998 08:30:55 -0700
At 04:11 PM 4/7/98 +1000, Julian Assange wrote:
>
>Even if you accept Penrose's basic argument,
If you do, then you are saying that consciousness is dependant on
random noise. While that may be relevant in the nervous system
(e.g., helping signal detectability, generating random starting
states for various annealing-type-computations, etc.), I hold
to the following strong assertion: the brain evolved to
be reliable in spite of/working with its noisy, discrete elements.
It would not be a useful design for high-level thoughts, goals, etc.
to be succeptible to noise.
Which is not to say tweaking the mechanism doesn't affect the mind.
But to think the mind depends on quantum randomness (as Penrose does in
my interpretation) is to fail to appreciate the independance from this that
the brain is designed for.
The whole point of Reason, t is to determine good from random trajectories.
------------------------------------------------------------
David Honig Orbit Technology
honig@otc.net Intaanetto Jigyoubu
When exponentiation is outlawed, only outlaws will exponentiate.
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:16:54 ADT