From: Stathis Papaioannou (stathisp@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Dec 04 2009 - 16:59:23 MST
2009/12/5 Stuart Armstrong <dragondreaming@googlemail.com>:
> See my previous statement. You're presenting an impossibility
> statement - no quantum level information is relevant to consciousness.
> Impossibility statements require much, much stronger justification
> than a few handwavy comments. And there is nothing impossible about
> designing a robust consciousness based on a quantum computer where the
> consciousness is lost if the quantum states are erased. So this is an
> impossibility statement about the specific brain that we have - brains
> we don't have all that much of an understanding of yet.
What I was pointing out is that it is wrong to claim that perfect
copying at the quantum level is necessary for continuity of
consciousness, since even a gross physical change to the brain, such
as a stroke or traumatic injury, may leave personal identity intact.
It is also by no means clear that it would preclude copying of the
mind if quantum effects are important in consciousness. A quantum
computer is Turing emulable; it is more efficient than a classical
computer, but it can't compute uncomputable functions. You can save
the data on a quantum computer to disk, then load it into another
quantum or classical computer and carry on with the program.
-- Stathis Papaioannou
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