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Philosophy

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  • SETI (and, in general, signals intelligence?) is an interesting avenue.
    – christo183
    Commented Mar 21, 2020 at 14:15
  • 1
    Note as an aside, the "simulation" assumption presupposes that consciousness == algorithms, IE the functional version of Identity theory. I think we have more than enough examples of non-conscious functional implementations in our world to know that functional Identity Theory is utterly false. I did not address this problem with the question in my reply, as you pretty clearly are just using "simulation" to try to think your way to bigger questions.
    – Dcleve
    Commented Mar 21, 2020 at 20:10
  • Argument about pi is not a good argument because pi is computable. There's a finite-length algorithm that, given n, will halt after a finite number of steps, giving the n-th decimal digit of pi. That is, pi encodes only a finite amount of information. After all nobody complains that 1/3 = .333... requires an infinite amount of information to express. All you need is the high school long division algorithm. A better argument is the noncomputable numbers; but there's a good (constructive) argument that they don't exist; namely, that they're not computable!
    – user4894
    Commented May 31, 2022 at 6:29
  • @user4894 An nth decimal digit approximation of of pi is just an approximation to pi, and in formal logic terms is therefore NOT pi.
    – Dcleve
    Commented May 31, 2022 at 9:01
  • @user4894 -- if two terms which are not equal (B=/=A) are set equal in a computation (B=A) then that computation is now at risk of a logic explosion. This can lead to computational errors, or a computation crashing. Approximations work well enough that this characteristic of computational approximating rarely leads to computational catastrophe, but the potential is always there.
    – Dcleve
    Commented May 31, 2022 at 14:42