tom

So Israel, killing 100 Gazan protesters and maiming 14,000 with butterfly bullets is OK. USA dealing with invaders lawfully is not. Go figure.

So, you support open borders for Israel?

That has got to be the dumbest non-sequitur I have seen on this forum for several days! Now, you claim physical objects can create a separate consciou...

But of course, you claim that certain objects in the physical universe, create the conscious universe, but have no clue how or why. Physics, however, ...

According to known physics, robots can experience everything a human can, and since their hardware is more flexible, they are quaranteed to possess th...

So, red objects reflect or emit photons of predominately red energy. Humans label photons of this energy (or the black-body spectrum centred on red) a...

The ball is red. The redness of the ball begins a causal chain by which certain neurones fire in a human or certain circuits fire in a robot. So, your...

So did Obama. He just handed the children over to human traffickers. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-obama-administration-children-human-traffic...

It is interesting to note, that the gradual, incremental process of evolution has produced at least two universal leaps. Initially the genetic code it...

I'm sure the damsel in distress is grateful for your white-knighting, but if someone declares that humans are not finite physical systems, then I pref...

Wow! The laws of physics don't apply to humans. Now, that really is funny.

You don't think humans are finite physical systems?

Well, you have no defense, have no interest in a defense, can't point to a defense, but quibble with term "indefensible" to describe an indefensible p...

It's clear you don't know what Godel has to do with any of this, so let me explain. The laws of physics are written in a mathematics which is consiste...

No one defends that position. Basic empiricism.

But yet co claim it is a defensible position. How do you even know that, or are you just guessing?

Why don't you defend it then?

Why should the USA not be allowed to police its border?

Whose zero tolerance policy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7467ZT4rkE

Why was no one complaining when Obama separated children at the border? http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/19/photos-obama-immigration-detention-facilitie...

I'm not sure that probability is of any use to you. It cannot be applied to explanatory theories (i.e. scientific theories), and it even doesn't work ...

These sort of questions are basically Solipsistic. While Solipsism is logically self-consistent, it is also an exponentially more complicated theory t...

Babbage's Analytic Engine is a universal computer, as are PCs. These are all finite state machines. Ignoring the fact that Turing machines do not exis...

What has the Turing machine got to do with any of this, or Godel for that matter? What laws of physics do Turing machines obey?

I think it is hilarious when people trawl the internet in desperation. Anyway, you made the amusing claim that: Name me a computable function that can...

That is almost funny. I see, the Deutsch-Principle applies to Reality, but not humans.

It is proved that current known laws of physics obey the Deutsch Principle. It is conjectured that all future laws must also. The earliest known desig...

Maybe you could do the decent thing, and stop wasting people's time?

It is a principle of physics, as important as Conservation of Energy, that a universal computer may exactly emulate any finite physical system by fini...

We did not endow our brains with computational universality, nor create the first software to be self-aware. Evolution did that. There is nothing beyo...

It's called science. It is proved, that according to known physics, universal computers are equivalent - they possess the same repertoire - and that t...

I've been through this many times. Skipping the preliminaries, it is a brain that may instantiate arbitrary programs. Animal brains lack the hardware ...

Maybe an orangutan could become a person, if it evolved a computationally universal brain?

Robots and animals can do 1). Only humans can do 2). Robots will also do 2) when we figure out how to build a General Purpose AI.

You have no rebuttal short of "I don't understand this". So it's you versus Cantor? Demonstrating your lack of comprehension does not constitute an ar...

Do you understand though? So, we have established that you DON'T understand it. Repeating an error ad infinitum does not correct it. And some of those...

Seriously, you can even add infinity to infinity. Plenty of cases where that happens in mathematics.

Nothing to prevent you from adding 1 to infinity.

What are the reasons to believe QM is flawed? And yes, there is no evidence that there is a problem with either QM or GR. The known problems are purel...

The computer program for reality may be quite simple. Initial conditions, certain fundamental laws, and off you go. This idea may explain the low entr...

It is possible to simulate our world according to physics. If it is possible, it is certain to happen. (if you are a realist) There is no evidence tha...

Science really can't work that way. Progress is made by finding problems with our theories and proposing solutions to these problems, not by certifyin...

I think that most people when confronted with the idea that animals are not sentient, do not possess qualia, don't even know they exist etc. find that...

There are no criteria of validity in science.

Have you got any examples of that?

You can demand empirical proof as much as you like, you are never going to get it. Because the methods of criticism available are different.

I can't help but wince a little every time I read something about proof in science in this thread. It's like the Scientific Method never happened.

That's not a particularly convincing argument.

Did you give an argument that animals are not self aware, or did you just assert it?

I argued in another thread that algorithms are not physical - they are logical. Of course, their instantiation must be physical, but given that this i...