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Article 6014 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu (Stephen P Spackman)
Subject: Re: Hypothesis: I am a Transducer (Formerly "Virtual Grounding")
In-Reply-To: clarke@acme.ucf.edu's message of Mon, 1 Jun 1992 18:38:17 GMT
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	<1992Jun1.183817.10392@cs.ucf.edu>
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1992 20:00:55 GMT

Wait a minute. You seem to be assuming that randomness is ITSELF an
observable. The fact that a simulation of system X may not yield the
same results as system X itself is wholely uninteresting, since if
there IS randomness out there, then "two runs" of the "real" system X
(whatever tht means) would not be obliged to return the same result
as EACH OTHER.

Your simulation is successful whenever you predict ANY of the possible
outcomes of a physical experiment - since that's the best that reality
itself can offer.

(Another way of phrasing this is that if you randomised algorithm
fails when a non-random source is substituted for its RNG, then you
never had an algorithm in the first place.)

(And ANOTHER way of phrasing it is that (given totality) a
strengthened postcondition is interconvertible with a weakened
precondition, and vice-versa. Nondeterminism and (enough) hidden state
amount to the same thing. Given how LITTLE of the state of the "real
world" will ever be communicated to you, equivalence up to
(personal!) observability is an incredibly weak criterion - but is
also the strongest you can have).
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stephen p spackman         Center for Information and Language Studies
stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu                    University of Chicago
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       Believe in Strong AI? I don't even believe in Strong I!


