Re:Fifty or Sixty Years of Processor Development for This?
by mjburgess on Wednesday April 04, 2018 @05:43AM
(#16753296)
Yes, but you're defining "observation" as some weird intra-wood process (, intra-silicon in the case of digital machines).
Observation means, for example, reflecting some light off the thing. Does a piece of silicon become transparent if I program it to model glass? No.
So, trivially, it is observed immediately not to be equivalent.
What you mean by "observation" is: can a person using the model system inform themselves of the target.
Do I get the message "lets visible light through: 98%" from the machine when I have correctly modelled the glass.
That message isn't observation, it's calculation. Calculation is what happens when I use a tool to inform myself about something.
That the machine emits the right symbols in a way that it is programmed to, so that I acquire accurate beliefs about the world, says nothing of the machine. The machine does not become transparent.
Observation means, for example, reflecting some light off the thing. Does a piece of silicon become transparent if I program it to model glass? No.
So, trivially, it is observed immediately not to be equivalent.
What you mean by "observation" is: can a person using the model system inform themselves of the target.
Do I get the message "lets visible light through: 98%" from the machine when I have correctly modelled the glass.
That message isn't observation, it's calculation. Calculation is what happens when I use a tool to inform myself about something.
That the machine emits the right symbols in a way that it is programmed to, so that I acquire accurate beliefs about the world, says nothing of the machine. The machine does not become transparent.