From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Sat Oct 09 2004 - 23:18:07 MDT
> 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.
Ironically enough, his own concrete attempt at a unified physics theory,
twistor theory, is not so much of a Mystery Physics, and in fact is quite
computational-ish....
-- Ben
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