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throwawayk7hyesterday at 11:39 PM1 replyview on HN

why is that obviously false? To a functionalist, a pen and paper and a set of rules is sufficient for consciousness.


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RivieraKidyesterday at 11:51 PM

Gist of the argument:

If it was true, you can create extreme pain by running a program. You can run the program by simulating a CPU, using pen and paper for memory. So you're essentially claiming that some simulated being is in pain because there are some 1s and 0s on paper. In fact, you can decide to use an arbitrary encoding of the memory, so a sufficiently long sequence of 0s written on paper corresponds to a simulated being feeling pain in some encoding. That is clearly nonsense.

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