Re: Human mind not Turing computable according to Penrose?

From: Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Oct 10 2004 - 00:16:10 MDT


Ben Goertzel wrote:
>> Penrose also asserts with no proof whatsoever that humans are not
>> subject to diagonalization, and backs it up by asserting that humans
>> are uncomputable (and presumably physically indescribable); he gives
>> us absolutely no reason to believe this assertion, but uses it as his
>> argument that humans have a mystical ability (why? he hasn't shown
>> that we can *solve* our diagonalization, just argued that we somehow
>> physically don't have one), which in turn is his sole basis for
>> asserting humans to be uncomputable.

> Well, he doesn't really believe humans are in principle physically
> indescribable. He just believes they're indescribable in terms of
> contemporary physics, and computable physics in general -- but not in
> terms of the Mystery Physics.

Should we be describable in Mystery Physics, his argument fails; I could
hand you a diagonalized description of Ben Goertzel.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://intelligence.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


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