Brain Simulation vs Brain Emulation

[esl]

The purpose of this post is to explore the requirements to recreate a living, conscious human being on a computer, as opposed to running a functional model of a brain in software

Comments

[nanikore]

1. Define "relevant" values. How do you deem that the values are exhaustive of all possible activity?

2. How do we determine that none of the defined functions are underdetermined?

3. How do you know you are not creating a p-zombie? Actually, your descriptions describe the nature of a certain kind of p-zed, i.e. "It's all just number crunching", "will appear". Once this is translated into hardware, it doesn't make things any different.

4. The physical processes are determined by what? A program? You can surely see where I'm going with this.

5. The Chinese Room recreates Chinese output. The "Conscious Room" recreates movements, speech, "emotions", et cetera. The human observer would interpret all that and give it a pass. That's what a p-zombie does.

[esl]

1. If we successfully generate several types of complex behavior, identical to the original, we can assume our model is accurate enough, and the chosen parameters are enough to capture the state of the brain

[nanikore]

1. Which types? How do we know if these types, not being exhaustive, create gaps? If the modeling is not proven to be exhaustive, then the criticism is valid because of the uncertainty the possible gaps in the model create.

2. There are just way too many couching conditionals here. I would not be satisfied. It is also "likely" that unseen parameters would escape detection indefinitely- By the very nature which would render them unseen. The assumption of deviation is played extremely loose here. Exactly how long is "very", and by what is that determined. There is too much hand waving.

3. The question of a P-zombie is an existential one. P-zombies aren't human beings. The question you fielded in this section of "a human being existing" is thus a misnomer. It's more a question of whether the physical state of a simulated human existing or not, which is a much less interesting query to me.

4. How are you building this hardware, and how is this hardware going to function without programming, which would be software code?

[esl]

1 and 2. People successfully build and test all kinds of complex systems, even though usually the exhaustive testing is not feasible. For example the CPU in your computer hasn't been exhaustively tested, yet it works correctly enough for you to be satisfied with it. What is different about the systems I'm describing