[westoncb]

Lets say you select all the aspects of a person's life that you consider to have any relevance to anyone and write down a description of every one of them—is that person now 'made' of words? That's how ridiculous this is.

I think what this is missing is a justification for thinking the universe somehow 'uses' mathematics in this sense; being /describable/ by it, is not at all the same as actually being generated by it.

There is a mistaken assumptions here that consistent rules from /within/ the universe would apply to its own operation. It's like assuming that because some rules must always hold when Monopoly is played, that the rules governing its physical constitution must be drawn from the same set.

"Confusing the moon with the finger pointing at it" —is a simple concept to understand, but seeing all the subtle places where we actually make the mistake in our mental lives requires another level of effort.

[51Cards]

Also my perspective on it. The means by which we describe, comprehend, or measure something is not the same as what it is actually made of.

Math is a quantitative description methodology, but no amount of "math" will bring a single photon into being.

[zbyte64]

I think mathematics and physics sets the bar higher then subjective relevance when formulating descriptions. If you did manage to create a description that would accurately predict every response of a person then you would have a hard time (if not impossible) discerning the difference between the two agents.

[westoncb]

But one of them wouldn't be something anyone would call an 'agent.' One would be a description of an agent, or a recipe for producing one—but at the end of the day, one is meat and the other is a set of symbols.

[goldenkey]

But aye..that's the rub. Is there any difference between meat that appears to operate _EXACTLY_ the same as different meat (constructed using the symbols)? Computationally, no. But if two things in an information-theoretic world, are informationally equivalent, then for all intensive purposes, they are equivelent. Quantum physics says this with regard to quantum states, there's no meat to differentiate electrons, only informational states.

You guys basically complemented each-other, and came back to the beauty of the question.

I'd say what's more pressing is, does the information match the implementation. That is, is there any glimpse of external forces (that implement our universe) inside of it.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat

If our whole reality is more of a rouge, rather than an accident, then it's possible our reality has almost nothing to do with the parent-verse. And well, everything we seem to value as good models for the true implementation, are well, garbage.

[westoncb]

I think you have a mistake here:

> ...the same as different meat (constructed using the symbols)?

Your answer is talking about a comparison between, e.g., a human and an essentially identical human /constructed/ using a set of symbols that encodes our understanding of the human's constitution.

The original question is comparing, e.g. a human and a set of symbols which describes the human.

I consider each of the following to be meaningfully separate questions:

Reality is mathematics.

Reality can be created with mathematics.

Something equivalent to reality can be created using mathematics, if 'informational equivalence' is the equivalence relation in question.

[goldenkey]

True reality is ineffable. The subjective does not equal the objective.

The nature of consciousness is a black box. Therefore the nature of measurement, of assurance that mathematics matches reality, is only within the context of conscious observation, which is therefore subjective.

The objective truth will not be found within subjection.

[zbyte64]

> The nature of consciousness is a black box. Therefore the nature of measurement, of assurance that mathematics matches reality, is only within the context of conscious observation, which is therefore subjective.

Consciousness has a track record of taking a black box and deducing what is going on inside.

> The objective truth will not be found within subjection.

Wouldn't you need to understand the nature of subjective processes in order to stipulate such a limit? If you don't understand consciousness then you do not understand its limits.

[zbyte64]

Put both in separate rooms you cannot observe and equip them with a two way mic/speaker. Would you be able to determine which was a meat bag and the other was a simulation? If you can then we know the description is inaccurate. If you can't then not only is the description accurate but the substrate that the computation occurs in is not equivalent to what defines the person as a particular agent.

[westoncb]

Two things:

1) The A.I is not just a set of symbols, it's a physical machine, which means you're answering a different question.

2) The structure of the test means that you have stripped down the objects to be compared to the sounds they produce, and yet a person is more than sounds, as is the computer. Whenever we use the relation 'X is a Y' there is an implicit definition of the identities of X and Y; the more abstract it that definition is, the more things your relation will accept; at some level of abstraction the human and the A.I. may be called equivalent—but you'd have to state which one you're talking about.

[zbyte64]

1) You need something to compute the outcome of the symbols in order to test the accuracy of those symbols. I am not sure how to experimentally test your point without doing so. Perhaps that is the crux of the issue, we can't test symbols without tying them to a "physical medium".

2) We can introduce more communication layers as you desire and still keep in the spirit of the experiment. I opted for the strip down version due to simplicity of describing the experiment and the similarity it has to the turing test.