DMTheory wrote:
I have read arguments against this on the Nexus. The best was one that stated that circuits and logic gates can be represented with pipe/stream contraption, which I believe is how some of the earlier computational machines were implemented. So if we could program an artificially intelligent 'machine' using digital circuits, then one could also be made with enough steam pipes, and this doesn't seem feasible.
These people have failed to realise that there is no possible proof of consciousness, external to ones own mind. A rock could be conscious, people un-conscious zombies! Whose to say you couldn't create a self-aware system from steam pipes. The definition of consciousness is too fleeting and impossible to nail down with logic.
"Anonymous around the mouse, hyperspace black ops in my house,
A technical itch you can't ignore, viral like that magic spore,
Laced in life like a blockchain, special characters around my name,
They got game like Nintendo flow, it's always the same you will know,
I can't be pinned down like a Q-Bit, my architecture all neuromorphic,
On the roof if the internet had one, fire escape's fibre optic dragon." Onepacman